Ghaziabad: Oncologist declared Covid-19 positive; chain of contacts untraceable

Ghaziabad: The case of a 37-year-old doctor who stays at a residential pocket in Gyan Khand area of Indirapuram is turning out to be problematic as health officials

Ghaziabad: The case of a 37-year-old doctor who stays at a residential pocket in Gyan Khand area of Indirapuram is turning out to be problematic as health officials are unable to locate the source of the Sars-Cov-2 infection. They said apart from seven primary contacts which are his family members, they were not able to ascertain the exact number of other contacts of the doctor.

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The doctor’s test reports were received by the health department on April 15. He was the second healthcare personnel affected by Covid-19 in the district. The first case is of a government doctor from the community health centre at Dasna.

“In the case of the doctor from Indirapuram, continuous tracing of his contacts is needed. We roped in about 30 to 40 teams on Wednesday and Thursday for tracing, sanitisation of his area of residence and also to find out his contact history. However, apart from the seven primary contacts, we have not been able to ascertain the number of other contacts as well as the source from where he caught the Coronavirus,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical officer, Ghaziabad.

The doctor is an oncologist with a private hospital in Vaishali.

“It is vital to locate the source as they may further spread Covid-19 if they go undetected. Till Thursday evening, our teams were unsuccessful in tracing the source or the other contacts of the doctor. Till date, we have not come across any travel history of the doctor. For other Coronavirus patients, however, the source has been located,” Dr Gupta said.

“As of now, the residential pocket in Gyan Khand where he lives, comprising about 170-odd houses, has been sealed and will be soon declared as a hotspot. With this, the tally of hotspots in Ghaziabad will be 15,” he added.

Till Thursday evening, the count of Covid-19 positive patients in Ghaziabad stood at 28, seven of whom had already been discharged from different hospitals.

The CMO said that results of at least 97 of the 547 pending sample reports were received on Thursday and all of them were found negative for Sars-Cov-2. However, the total number of pending reports till Thursday stood at 627.

Across the state, officials said the tally of Covid-19 patients stood at 773 in 46 affected districts and 69 of these were discharged from hospitals while 13 have died so far.

The state health department officials said they will expedite the taking of samples as well as the testing process.

“We will now be starting with pool testing in different affected districts after the first lot of samples taken from the buffer zone in Agra turned out to be negative. On Wednesday, we had sent about 150 samples in a lot of five each for pool sampling,” said Amit Mohan Prasad, Uttar Pradesh’s principal secretary (health).

Under pool sampling, collective samples of several suspected cases are mixed and tested as one. In case the test is negative, all the individuals are treated as negative. In case the sample turns positive, every individual is tested separately.

“As part of our surveillance and containment exercise till April 15, we surveyed about 14.74 lakh households in different districts till April 15 and these households had a population of a total of 72,01,799,” Prasad added.

Awanish Awasthi, UP’s additional chief secretary (home) said strict instructions were issued to the district magistrates and senior superintendents of police to trace the suspected patients who are still in hiding and not revealing their health status.

“Action will be taken against those who are not declaring their health status by themselves and also against those who are trying to shield them. Apart from this, if any such case comes to light, action will also be taken against the local station house officer of the concerned police station,” Awasthi said.

He added that the total number of hotspot areas in the state stood at 269 till Thursday evening.