Experts suggest limited community spread in northeast Delhi’s hot spot
NEWDELHI: Health authorities say they are focusing on four areas within a 4km radius in northeast Delhi’s Dilshad Garden that appear to be reporting a bunch of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases. Experts suggest limited community spread has begun in the area, after reports that in many of these cases the source of the patient’s infection is unclear.
Officials have declared these four places as containment areas. Each of them has a focal patient (the person who might have infected others). Three of these containment areas were declared on Monday – two separate blocks of GTB Enclave and one in Dilshad Colony. Officials have been unable to establish travel or contact history of the focal patients in these areas.
The developments come amid a debate on whether India has entered the community transmission stage of the pandemic, in which the source of a patient’s infection could not be traced or isolated.
“One of the blocks (in GTB Enclave) is linked to a nurse from
Delhi State Cancer Institute who tested positive and the other is linked to an old man. We are not sure where he got the infection from,” a senior Delhi government official said, requesting anonymity.
On Monday, 10 nurses from the Delhi State Cancer Institute in GTB enclave tested positive for Covid-19, taking the hospital’s tally to 18 (of which two are doctors and 16 nursing staff). After this, the cancer institute decided to test all 48 of its patients.
“We have sent all samples for Covid-19 testing. If they test negative, patients will be moved to various private hospitals. However, if they test positive, they will be taken to the nearby Rajiv Gandhi Superspeciality Hospital, which is a dedicated Covid-19 centre,” said an official from the Delhi State Cancer Institute.
Rajiv Gandhi Superspeciality Hospital is one of the two Delhi government hospitals completely dedicated for treatment of the deadly infection caused by the Sars-cov-2 virus. At present, there are 85 Covid-19 positive and 164 suspected patients admitted to the hospital.