Officials struggle to trace all contacts, source of infection
PATNA: 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 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 disease on March 24, the man attended a wedding 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 suspected he was suffering from Covid-19 and referred him to Nalanda Medical College Hospital.
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), and he tested positive on March 24.
“We have been able to trace the [railway] guard who he came in contact with. Mapping all guests he came in contact with at 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.
“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,” said Dr Chaudhary.
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.