Image: Heikki Saukkomaa / Lehtikuva

A total of 130 people, including students at Helsinki University’s Viikki teacher training school, face immediate quarantine following exposure last week to a pupil diagnosed with novel coronavirus.

Health officials said at a press conference on Sunday evening that the infected youngster was one of two new novel coronavirus infections reported by Finnish public health authorities on Sunday morning.

The other was an elderly man whom officials said had also come into contact with a woman diagnosed with the disease last Friday. The woman had reportedly returned from northern Italy two days earlier on 26 February.

Helsinki and Uusimaa hospital district medical chief Asko Järvinen said that the woman had come into close contact with 15 people, all of whom had been contacted. The elderly man hadno close contacts, while the child is believed to have had close contact with about 130 others.

He had reportedly gone to school while exhibiting mild symptoms. He had also attended football practice with the Helsinki team HJK in the city’s Töölö district.

"Most of the names of the persons exposed are known to health authorities and they will all be contacted," Järvinen told reporters, according to daily Helsingin Sanomat.

Schooling during quarantine

School principal Tapio Lahtero said that school authorities had mapped the child’s movement at school during the past week and determined that students and teachers from classes 6A, 6B, 6C and 4B were exposed to the disease and should be placed in quarantine.

The quarantine period began immediately from their most recent contact with the young child, Lahtero noted.

"The quarantine