Virus footprint grows; 11 isolated across India

Nepal, Italy get their first cases; 41mn on lockdown in China

NEWDELHI/BEIJING: Up to 11 people in five states were the first to be quarantined in India, China placed tens of millions more under citywide lockdowns, and the number of dead and infected due to a deadly new virus rose sharply as authorities around the world raced on Friday to avert a global contagion.

Temporarily titled 2019-ncov (novel coronavirus), the pathogen had till Friday killed at least 26 people and sickened 900 more since it began spreading from a meat market in China’s Wuhan in late December. The number of fatalities were 18 on Thursday.

New infections were reported from Italy, Nepal and a second American city (Chicago), and authorities in China’s Hubei province – outbreak’s ground zero Wuhan falls in the region -said a 36-year-old man who died of a sudden cardiac arrest is the youngest fatality due to the virus yet.

Chinese authorities also expanded a lockdown announced in five cities on Thursday to 13 on Friday, stranding an estimated 41 million people across an area roughly equivalent to the size of Canada. Parts of the Great Wall of China, too, were closed.

In India, none of the thousands who have arrived from Chinese cities in the last fortnight have so far tested positive for an infection, but at least 11 were believed to have been quarantined till Friday with flu-like symptoms before four of them were declared uninfected late on Friday.

Flu-like symptoms are common to a ncov infection, which poses the highest risk to people who are vulnerable due to their age or the existence of other infections.

Indian officials are tracking dozens of people, including students who were in Wuhan when the outbreak began. In addition to the four who were cleared, seven more are under isolated observation in Kerala, news agency PTI reported. Of these, two were in state capital Thiruvananthapuram and one each in Thrissur, Kochi, Kozhikode and Pathanamthitta.

“Other than cold and tiredness, the three patients [in Mumbai] don’t have any other symptoms of the virus. But just to make precautionary measures, we have kept them under observations. Their blood samples have been sent to National Institute of Virology for examination,” said Dr Padmaja Keskar, executive health officer, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).