Kolkata man, 57, with no travel history or contact with Covid patient tests ‘positive’

KOLKATA: Triggering concerns of community transmission, a 57-year-old man with no history of foreign travel and no known contact with a Coronavirus patient was detected with Covid-19 in West Bengal on Saturday evening. His is the fourth confirmed Covid-19 case in the state.

The man, a resident of Dum Dum in the northern fringes of Kolkata, was admitted in a private hospital on March 16 after being ill with fever, accompanied by a dry cough, since March 13, a top health department official said .

His condition deteriorated on March 19 with the onset of acute respiratory distress syndrome and he was put on ventilator, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Doctors suggested that he be put on cardiac and respiratory support systems, and his swab samples were sent to the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) and SSKM Hospital for testing, and were found to be positive for Covid-19.

“As far as we have learnt, the person didn’t have any travel history. We are trying to gather further details,” said the health department official.

Community transmission occurs when a person with no travel history to a Covid-19-affected country or known contact with a confirmed carrier of the virus tests positive for the disease. It indicates undiagnosed and often asymptomatic people are unknowingly causing the infection, which makes it difficult to break the chain of transmission.

To be sure, the Bengal man isn’t the first suspected case of community transmission in India.

A 20-year-old man from Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, who works as a hairdresser in Chennai and tested positive on March 18, and a woman in Pune, both with no travel history to an overseas destination and no known contact with a Covid-19 patient ,have also tested positive for the disease, raising concerns of community transmission.