NEET-UG on Sunday; isolation rooms for symptomatic candidates, 15.97 lakh to take test

Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, September 12

The National Testing Agency is all set to conduct the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test, the high stakes competitive exam for entrance to under graduate medical courses, on Sunday across India. 

READ: Two students commit suicide over NEET in Tamil Nadu

As many as 15.97 lakh candidates have registered for the exam, which will be held across 3,862 centres in the country. The NTA has increased the number of exam centres from the previous 2,546 to 3,862 to ensure the conduct of safe exams in the midst of a surging COVID pandemic with cases today rising beyond 46 lakh with a daily rise of over 97,000 infections today.

In an important decision, the NTA will allow all symptomatic candidates to take exams in an isolation room, as earlier reported by The Tribune.

The NTA advisory has clarified that all candidates will be tested with thermo guns at the entry to registration rooms and candidates with more than 37.4 degree centigrade (99.4 degree Fahrenheit) will be taken to an isolation room and allowed to take tests there if their fever does not improve.

The Health Ministry had in its standard operating procedures for exam schedules allowed the exam conducting agencies to frame their own policy on how to deal with symptomatic candidates—whether to let them take tests or to deny them.

NTA chief Vineit Joshi earlier in an advisory said symptomatic candidates will be allowed to take tests alone in separate rooms where invigilators will be present in protective gear.

In the recent JEE Mains exams for entry to undergraduate engineering courses, 6.35 lakh candidates appeared out of 8.58 lakh who had registered.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.