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Woman tests positive for Covid-19 minutes after giving birth in Jammu
The mother, her newborn and her husband will be treated at the dedicated Covid-19 hospital in Gandhi Nagar and shall be discharged only after they test negative, the doctor said.
Amid the spike in Covid-19 cases across Jammu and Kashmir, a woman tested positive minutes after she gave birth to a baby at SMGS Hospital in the winter capital a couple of days earlier.
SMGS Hospital’s medical superintendent Dr MK Chalotra said, “The woman delivered a baby at SMGS Hospital on Friday. She belongs to Tringli village in Akhnoor sub division of Jammu district.”
Soon after giving birth to her baby, the woman tested positive for Covid-19, Dr Chalotra said.
“We have also sent samples of her baby and her husband for tests and their reports are awaited,” he added.
“They have been shifted to the Government Hospital in Gandhi Nagar which has been converted into a Covid-19 hospital. In fact, we had five positive cases in the SMGS hospital’s isolation ward for the past ten days but then Gandhi Nagar hospital was designated as a Covid-19 hospital and therefore we shifted all of them there on Saturday,” Dr Chalotra said.
The mother, her newborn and husband will be treated at the Covid-19 hospital in Gandhi Nagar and shall be discharged only after they test negative, he added.
When asked how the woman contracted the disease, Dr Chalotra said that the family’s contact history needs to be traced by the police.
“She or someone else in the family might have concealed their travel history and that remains a subject of investigation by the police and health teams dedicated for contact tracing. She was in labour pain and was hospitalized at the SMGS Hospital on April 9 and the next day she delivered a baby,” said Dr Chalotra.
“The woman was coughing and running fever as well that aroused the suspicion of the gynaecologists inside the labour room, who went for tests after her delivery. The reports tested positive,” he added.
This the first case of a Covid-19 positive patient giving birth to a child in the region.
“17 new cases were reported in Jammu and Kashmir. 5 from Jammu Division and 12 from Kashmir. The total number of positive cases now stand at 224,” government spokesman Rohit Kansal tweeted on Sunday.
