E-Paper
Health dept clueless about source of infection of Jalandhar ‘super-spreader’
40-year-old Covid-19 patient, who works in a media house, has infected at least 28 people
The health department is still clueless about the source of infection of a 40-year-old Covid-19 patient in the city who has spread the virus to at least 28 people.
The man, a resident of Raja Garden who works in a media house, has infected four of his family members, 12 co-workers and 12 of their direct and indirect contacts. These include 7 family members of a co-worker, a resident of Basti Danishmanda in the city.
The Raja Garden man, who was suffering from severe acute respiratory infection (SARI), tested positive for coronavirus on April 13. He neither has any travel history nor close contact with any positive patient.
The health officials said a 26-year-old man, who worked in the same media house, also tested positive in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh on April 15.
Jalandhar civil surgeon Dr Gurinder Kaur Chawla told HT that more than 250 samples of the close contacts of positive patients linked to the media house were collected.
Asked about the source of infection of the Raja Garden man, she said all these positive cases seem to be inter-linked to each other as the patients had been distributing langar among the people together. “They might have got the infection from there.”
However, Chawla said that she won’t able to tell the source of infection of “a particular patient as we are screening thousands of persons.”
The health officials said more than 100 persons linked to the media group have been put under home quarantine. They said all the positive cases from the media house are linked with the Raja garden man.
In Jalandhar district, the number of Covid-19 rose to 64 on Friday, which is equal to the tally in Mohali, the worst-affected district in the state.
Jalandhar has reported more than 50 cases in the past two weeks.
As per the state government’s status report till April 22, the health department has no information about source of infection of 12 positive cases reported in Jalandhar.
