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Meghalaya’s first Covid-19 patient dies, could have got infected from asymptomatic son-in-law
This is the second Covid-19 fatality in the Northeast after the death of a 65-year-old patient at Assam’s Silchar Medical College and Hospital last week.
A 69-year-old doctor from Shillong, the first Covid-19 positive patient of Meghalaya, passed away early on Wednesday.
John L Sailo Ryntathiang, the managing director of Bethany Hospitals, died at around 3:00 am on Wednesday, sources in Shilliong confirmed. He had tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday.
This is the second Covid-19 fatality in the Northeast after the death of a 65-year-old patient at Assam’s Silchar Medical College and Hospital last week. There are a total of 40 Covid-19 positive patients in the region - 32 in Assam, two in Manipur and Tripura and one each in Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh.
Though Ryntathiang didn’t have any recent travel history, he reportedly got infected from his son-in-law, a pilot with Air India who had returned from New York to Delhi on March 16 and reached Shillong on March 24.
“Preliminary investigations suggest that one of the relatives of the concerned person had a travel history to one of the infected countries and he was back in Shillong before the 14-day quarantine period was over,” Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma said on Tuesday.
“Though the person took all precautions, but sometimes we see asymptomatic cases as well, who don’t show any signs but could be a carrier. Therefore, there is a high chance that it could have been passed on from there. We are looking at all possibilities of how this could have happened,” he added.
Meghalaya had traced nearly 2,000 primary and secondary contacts of the patient and done tests on 90 of them (nearly half of the primary contacts).
The government had asked its Assam counterpart to support with testing of the 2,000 contacts. The Shillong-based Northeastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS) is the lone Covid-19 testing lab in Meghalaya.
“Our basic strategy would be to identify, isolate and test all contact for the first few days till we are able to zero down and close the loop of transmission,” Sangma said in Shillong after a cabinet meet on Tuesday.
Both branches of the private hospital, where the doctor worked, have been shut and the staff placed under quarantine. The government has asked everyone who may have visited Bethany Hospital on or after March 22 to register themselves by calling 108 or getting in touch with the health department.
Meghalaya’s capital Shillong has been placed under curfew for 48 hours beginning 6:00 am on Tuesday.
