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Bihar officials yet to find source of railway employee’s Covid-19 infection
Exactly one week before he tested positive for the coronavirus disease on March 24, the man attended a wedding at a community hall in Patna to which the bridegroom’s retinue travelled from Dildarnagar in Uttar Pradesh.
A 29-year-old junior railway employee, who reached Patna by train from Bhavnagar in Gujarat on March 9, may be the first case of community transmission of the Covid-19 virus in Bihar, where health authorities are now struggling to identify the source of infection. They are even struggling to establish who he came in contact with, but deny that he caught the infection through community transmission.
Exactly one week before he tested positive for the coronavirus disease on March 24, the man attended a wedding at a community hall in Patna to which the bridegroom’s retinue travelled from Dildarnagar in Uttar Pradesh. The railway employee complained of cough and fever and was admitted to a private medical facility in Patna late on March 22. The next morning, doctors at the facility, who suspected he was suffering from Covid-19, referred him for admission to the Nalanda Medical College Hospital (NMCH).
The same day, doctors at NMCH, designated the special coronavirus hospital in Patna, sent his sample to the Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Sciences (RMRIMS) in Bihar’s Agam Kuan, and he tested positive on March 24.
Community transmission of the virus is suspected when a person who has tested positive for Covid-19 has no recent history of travel to a country hit by the pandemic, and has had no known contacts with someone who has been on an overseas visit. The source of the infection cannot be traced in such a case.
“The railway employee came to Patna by train from Bhavnagar on March 9. We have been able to trace the [railway] guard who he came in contact with. However, mapping all the guests he came in contact with during the wedding on March 17 remains the biggest challenge for us,” said a district health official, requesting anonymity.
Patna civil surgeon Dr Raj Kishore Chaudhary accepted that his office had been unable to trace all the people the railway employee came in contact with.
“We are unable to trace 29 people who he came in contact with during the wedding. Some of them may even be from UP, where the baraat came from,” said Dr Chaudhary.
He, however, denied it was a case of community transmission of the disease.
“The affected person has a travel history in Gujarat. We do not know where he contacted the virus from, whether it was in Gujarat or in the train, because the railway employee is reluctant to talk to us and was even concealing facts initially. It is only when the virus gets transmitted through him to other people he came in contact with that we are going to call it community transmission of the virus,” added Dr Chaudhary.
“So far, we have tested the samples of his mother, two brothers and three sisters and all have tested negative. We have taken samples of the staff of Patliputra Utsav hall, where he attended the wedding. We are now in the process of collecting the oropharyngeal sample of his father, who is attending to the patient at the isolation ward of the NMCH,” the Patna civil surgeon added.
Bihar’s principal secretary (health) Sanjay Kumar had, on Friday, denied any case of community transmission of the virus so far in Bihar. He said, “Community transfer is when the source of the virus is untraceable.”
Efforts to reach him for comment on Saturday failed.
“Of the nine Covid-19 cases in Bihar, four have international travel history while one has come from coronavirus-affected Gujarat,” said Dr Nirmal Kumar Sinha, medical superintendent of the 850-bed NMCH.
