Telangana Finance Minister goes into quarantine after assistant tests positive for coronavirus

Naveen S Garewal
Tribune News Service
Hyderabad, June 14 

Telangana’s Finance Minister T Harish Rao quarantined himself after his assistant was among the state’s 253 new cases that tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday.

Rao is the nephew of Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao and is a frequent visitor at the chief minister’s residence.

Official sources said he and 17 other contacts tested negative but had gone into quarantine as a precaution.

Several members of the chief minister’s family had attended Rao’s birthday celebrations on June 3.

MLA’s positive test sets off massive contact tracing

A Member of Legislative Assembly from the ruling Telugu Rashtra

Samithi (TRS) was also among those who tested positive on Sunday.

The legislator, who is from the erstwhile united Warangal district, was admitted to a private hospital in Hyderabad. His family and staff have been quarantined at a function hall in Hyderabad.

The MLA is believed to have contracted the infection during a recent visit to his constituency, where he reportedly attended various functions.  Doctors said the legislator was stable but needed medical attention.

The MLA’s diagnoses has become an administrative nightmare for police and health machinery, with officials now struggling to identify all those who may met the legislator between June 2 and 5, when he attended an event held to mark Telangana formation day, among other events.

Police are using photos from the events to track the people the legislator may have come in contact with, officials said.

He is the first MLA from Telangana to test positive for Covid-19.

Meanwhile, two district collectors from the state—Siddipet district collector A P Venkatrami Reddy and Yadadri Bhuvanagiri district collector Anitha Ramachandran—have gone into isolation after some people they met tested positive for coronavirus.

Sunday’s 253 cases were Telangana’s single-day largest spike yet in COVID-19 infections. The state also recorded eight new deaths on Sunday.

The development took Telangana’s COVID-19 infection to 4,737 with 182 deaths. With 179 new infections, Hyderabad accounted for 70 per cent of Telangana’s new cases. This was the largest spike for the city yet.