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PM Modi reviews situation as 3 more test positive for coronavirus in India
The third new case was confirmed in Tamil Nadu, the first for the state. The country has reported 34 cases of the disease scattered across Delhi-NCR, Jaipur and Hyderabad apart from Ladakh and Tamil Nadu.
India on Saturday reported three more positive cases of the new coronavirus disease (Covid-19), taking the total number of infected people in the country to 34, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a review meeting to discuss measures to contain the outbreak that has killed more than 3,500 people and affected at least 100,000 others globally.
In India, five other people — two each from Punjab and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and one in Agra — appeared to show signs of the disease, according to preliminary tests that were yet to be confirmed by the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune.
Of the cases confirmed by the Union health ministry on Saturday, two Indians were diagnosed with Covid-19 in the Union Territory of Ladakh. They have a travel history from Iran, one of the worst-affected countries outside China, where at least 3,000 people have died and 80,000 others have been infected.
The third new case was confirmed in Tamil Nadu, the first for the state. The patient is a 45-year-old man who recently returned from Oman, the Union health ministry and state minister C Vijayabaskar said. All three patients are in a stable condition.
The country has reported 34 cases of the disease scattered across Delhi-NCR, Jaipur and Hyderabad apart from Ladakh and Tamil Nadu. Three patients in Kerala, all of whom returned from the epicentre of the contagion in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, recovered last month and were released from hospitals.
Saturday’s developments came as Prime Minister Modi discussed with Union health minister Harsh Vardhan the country’s preparedness to deal with the outbreak.
At the meeting, the PM asked officials to identify locations for sufficient quarantine facilities and make provisions for critical care in case the disease spreads further in the country. “... action should be initiated for creating awareness in community about the disease and the precautions to be taken,” Modi was quoted as saying in an official statement. The meeting was also attended by external affairs minister S Jaishankar, cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba, health secretary Preeti Sudan and chief of defence staff General Bipin Rawat.
Addressing beneficiaries of a government scheme through video-conferencing on Saturday, PM Modi also appealed people not to believe rumours over the virus’s spread and asked them to follow only doctors’ advice.
Among the suspected cases, the two Indians in J&K — who have a travel history to virus-hit Italy and South Korea — have been quarantined, a spokesperson of the J&K administration said on Saturday. After being diagnosed with a high viral load at the Government Medical College, Jammu, earlier this week, they fled the hospital but were brought back within hours.
In Uttar Pradesh’s Agra, a seventh person, who was in contact with an infected Delhi resident, is suspected to have contracted the infection. The man, 41, has been put under isolation at a hospital in Agra, according to Agra chief medical officer Mukesh Kumar Vats. Six relatives of the Delhi man have previously tested positive for the disease.
Two men from Punjab’s Hoshiarpur, who returned from Italy on Wednesday, showed symptoms of the disease and have been isolated, doctors at Amritsar’s Guru Nanak Dev Hospital (GNDH) said.
The health ministry also said on Saturday that more that 150 people who came in contact with an American tourist and his wife who tested positive for Covid-19 in Bhutan after travelling in India for 11 days have been put under the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP).
The contact-tracing effort was launched after the patients, a 76-year-old man and his wife, travelled to Mumbai, Kolkata and Guwahati before leaving for Bhutan on March 2.
The contact-tracing operation is crucial to avert a wider community transmission. While most cases in India have likely contracted the virus from global hotbeds of the infection such as Iran and Italy, the Union health minister on Thursday said the government kept nearly 30,000 under close watch to check for symptoms of the disease. The number is likely to be higher by Saturday.
Early on Saturday morning, a special flight from Tehran landed in Delhi with swab samples of 110 Indians stranded in Iran. Those Indian citizens will be evacuated if their samples test negative for the novel coronavirus infection, officially named SARS-Cov-2. “Those passengers who test positive for Covid-19 will not be allowed to board the flight to India. They will be isolated at a health facility in Iran itself,” a senior health ministry official told HT on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, the flight operated by Mahan Air later in the day returned with Iranian nationals who were in India.
According to central government data, 30 airports in India have so far screened 726,122 people from 7,108 flights for Covid-19 symptoms that include coughing, fever and respiratory issues. About 52 laboratories in the country are operational across the country for testing the virus. In other measures, Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) on Saturday began isolating passengers arriving from 12 coronavirus-affected countries from other international passengers by segregating baggage claim, customs clearance and terminal exit.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has called the spread of the virus “deeply concerning” as the coronavirus disease spread across 94 nations and territories.
