First corona case surfaces in Punjab, country count now mounts to 44
NEWDELHI/AMRITSAR: The number of new coronavirus infections in India rose by five on Monday with Punjab and Jammu reporting their first patients, taking the total number of cases in the country to 44 and prompting top authorities to intensify preparations for a possible surge in the outbreak by beefing up isolation and quarantine facilities.
Two of these five new confirmed coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases were due to close contact with people who were sickened in the past week.
The others – a 3-year-old child in Kochi, a 63-year-old woman in Jammu and a 44-year-old man in Hoshiarpur – are believed to have been infected while they were abroad recently.
A majority of the active 41 cases (three patients in Kerala recovered last month) are in hospitals spread over the Delhi-NCR region.
Officials in the Union home ministry said they have asked paramilitary forces to set up 75 isolation wards with a total capacity of at least 5,400 patients across 37 locations in the country, news agency PTI reported.
The measures came even as authorities continued to screen thousands of people arriving at international airports, and health workers raced to track down people who may have come in contact with confirmed patients.
The three-year-old from Kochi visited Italy with his family recently. Italy, along with Iran, has emerged as the biggest source of new infections in India. The Hoshiarpur patient also travelled to Italy and arrived in Amritsar on March 4, where he was isolated immediately afterwards.
“The man returned to Amritsar by an Air India flight from Milan in Italy. He had landed at Amritsar international airport on March 4 along with his two other family members,” Punjab principal secretary (health) Anurag Aggarwal said.
The man’s wife and child, however, have tested negative, said Aggarwal, adding that the two, however, have been kept in isolation at an Amritsar hospital.
“The man’s condition is stable,” said state health minister Balbir Singh Sidhu.
The patient in Jammu had travelled to Iran. A sixth possible new patient was identified as an engineer in Bengaluru, according to Karnataka health officials who said the man has tested positive in initial tests that need to be confirmed by the National Institute of Virology, Pune. The man “works with an IT company and travelled from Austin, Texas, to Bangalore via Dubai. “He landed in Bangalore on March 1. He first had no symptoms but went to a clinic on March 4 when he developed some signs,” said Karnataka state medical education minister D Sudhakar.
44-YEAR-OLD HOSHIARPUR MAN HAD RECENTLY RETURNED FROM ITALY ALONG WITH HIS FAMILY; FIRST CASE REPORTED IN J&K TOO