6-month-old among 5 of Bengal family tests +ve

The total number of Covid-19 patients jumped to 15 including a death in West Bengal on Friday after five members of a family including a newborn among three children from Tehatta in Nadia tested positive to the virus. The five infected family members are a sixmonth-old female child, a nine-year-old girl, an 11year-old boy, a 27-year-old woman and a 45-year-old woman. They came in contact with a youth, who had travelled from London, at a relative’s wedding in New Delhi recently. On March 16-17, the youth was admitted to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital with illness. He was later found infected with the deadly virus. The family of five returned home to stay in isolation allegedly without informing the state health department about their visit, sources revealed. The five patients are being brought to

Infectious Diseases Hospital in Beliaghata for quarantine.

This is the first time so many members of a family in the state were found to be infected by Covid-19. The development comes as the 10th Covid-19 patient, admitted to a private hospital, been put on ventilator after his condition turned very critical. The 66-year-old man had come in contact with some foreigners at a relative’s wedding in Midnapore recently.

Meanwhile, the state will get four more centres for testing Covid-19 virus samples as 25,096 suspected patients were in “home surveillance” till March 26. These will increase the total number of such testing facilities to six here.

The new testing facilities are School of Tropical Medicine Kolkata (STMK), Midnapore Medical College and Hospital (MMCH), North Bengal Medical College and Hospital (NBMCH) and a private hospital: Apollo Gleneagles Hospital Kolkata which have been approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).