Crowded Mess, Safety Norms Led To Surge of COVID-19 cases in IIT Madras

As the number of COVID-19 cases in the IIT Madras campus soared to 104, including 87 students, 16 persons working in the hostel mess besides one other resident in the campus, lack of safety precautions at the hostel mess, which had remained open for past several months to cater to the 700-odd research scholars, who had stayed at the campus during the later phases of the lockdown, has led to the rampant virus spread.

With all 700 students staying at the hostel rooms and doing research activities in the labs, having only one mess to serve food, overcrowding has been a regular feature leading to the outbreak, said students on condition of anonymity.

Sources said that several violations in the Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) were reported inside the campus by the students and even outsiders, who come regularly to work in the institution, have not followed the safety norms.

Even as the State government has allowed to open universities and colleges especially for scholars only from December 2, the IIT-M, which is not under the control of the University Grants Commission (UGC), has been permitting PG research students, who need to do experimental works, to return to campus from August in a calibrated manner with 14-day quarantine and testing of each returnee.

A senior official from Higher Education Department said that IITs across the country, which are autonomous, have started research activities from PG scholars few months back since the controlling authority – IIT-Council has permitted to do that.

S Kaushik, a member of Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle of IIT-M said that the main reason for coronavirus cases was that the students would have not followed safety measures. “Many outsiders, who had come for various works inside the campus, might have interacted with the students,” he said adding students did not follow social distancing.

Taking stock of the situation, Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan, who visited the IIT-M campus, said that a total of 448 samples were tested out of which 104 were tested positive so far.

“Tests will be conducted for all the students and also faculties, administration officials, who were staying with their families in the resident quarters,” he said adding all the persons, who were tested positive for the virus were admitted to various hospitals and their health conditions were also improving.

Stating that lessons should be learned from what happened in IIT-M, the Health Secretary said students not following social distancing in the mess was the main reason for the spread of the virus.