E-Paper
Three Panchkula men who attended Sikar Jamaat +ve; 1 more case in Dera Bassi
Sarpanch’s father-in-law is latest to test positive at Jawaharpur
Three Panchkula men, who attended a Tablighi Jamaat event in Sikar, Rajasthan, last month, tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday, taking the district’s count – stable at two over the last eight days – to five.
In Mohali, one more Covid-19 case was reported from Dera Bassi’s hotspot, Jawaharpur village, pushing the count there to 22 and the district’s to 37, the highest in Punjab.
As UT, with its count of 18 over the last eight days, did not register any new case, the number of positive patients in the tricity now is 60 (Mohali with 37 cases and Panchkula with five ).
Three new Covid-19 cases were reported in Panchkula eight days after a 36-year-old staff nurse at the local civil hospital tested positive on March 31.
The men, aged 18, 37 and 80, residents of Banoi Khuda Baksh and Bakshiwala villages in Pinjore block of the district, had returned from Sikar on March 30 after attending Tablighi events for about 40 days.
District nodal officer for Covid-19, Dr Rajiv Narwal, said the men, who were related, were traced at Banoi Khuda Baksh village on April 1 and were moved to quarantine facilities at Nada Sahib gurdwara with other persons who had attended Jamaat events in other states.
“Their samples were sent for testing among 50 others on Wednesday and returned positive on Thursday. The remaining tested negative. The three patients are admitted in isolation ward of the civil hospital,” Dr Narwal said
Officials said the 80-year-old man, on his return from Sikar, did not go back home to Bakshiwala village, but stayed with the 18-year-old man at Banoi Khuda Baksh village, which was cordoned off after the men tested positive. Till now, about 127 persons who had attended Tablighi Jamaat events in different states, including Maharashtra and Rajasthan, have been quarantined in Panchkula. Around 60 of them have tested negative in the past two days.
In Dera Bassi, the 67-year-old father-in-law of the sarpanch of Jawaharpur village was admitted to Gian Sagar Hospital in Banur, after testing positive.
With the cases in the village climbing from 1 to 22 in five days, health authorities have declared the village a “containment zone”.
With this, 14 members of the extended family of the sarpanch and her cousin, a panch, have contracted the disease. The panch was the first to test positive on April 4.
The two, it is believed, did not observe social distancing norms. They organised community meals and distributed masks and medicines among the needy and migrant labourers in their area.
“All 22 patients are responding well to treatment. The reports of 16 more residents of the village are awaited,” said Mohali civil surgeon Dr Manjit Singh. “Five coronavirus patients have been cured and discharged from various hospitals of the district over the past four days,” he added.
Meanwhile, Mohali deputy commissioner Girish Dayalan took to Twitter on Thursday to confirm the number of cases in the village. “House to house survey on in neighbouring villages also. 54 more samples taken. Sealed villages of Mukandpur, Devi Nagar and Haripur Kurha as well,” he tweeted.
The Covid-19 test reports of senior Congress leader Deepinder Singh Dhillon have come out negative. Mohali’s health department had taken his samples on April 7 after a spate of Covid-19 positive cases in Dera Bassi. Dhillon had participated in some meetings in the area to check the state of preparedness. These meetings were also attended by some locals, who later tested positive. Dhillon said his reports were negative and he had not been put under quarantine by authorities. “I am observing self-isolation like many others,” he said.
