Hoshiarpur man tests positive, count 46

Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, March 9

Punjab reported its first coronavirus case today with the government confirming four other fresh infections through Monday taking the total Covid 19 count to 46.

The Health Ministry in a late night update said the National Institute of Virology, Pune, had confirmed as positive the samples from a person in Punjab, who recently came from Italy.

Punjab Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu in a medical bulletin said the patient, who belongs to Hoshiarpur, was a resident of Italy and was tracked at Amritsar airport. He is currently isolated at Government Medical College and Hospital in Amritsar.

India also reported a first Covid child case today — a three-year-old in Kerala’s Ernakulum who returned from Italy with his parents on March 7. The child’s parents have also been isolated at Ernakulum and are under review. The six new cases reported today include the Ernakulum child, two cases from Pune, one case from Delhi with travel history to Italy, one from Jammu with travel to Iran and one case from Meerut in UP.

The Meerut patient was in contact recently with the Agra-based persons who had earlier taken the infection from their Delhi relative with a history of travel to Italy. In all 9,41,717 international passengers from 8,827 flights have been screened at airports till now and around 1,921 passengers have been identified as symptomatic. Of these, 177 have been hospitalised; 33,599 passengers are under observation; and 21,867 passengers have completed their observation period.

Special Secretary, Health, Sanjeeva Kumar appealed to people to reveal their travel histories in the passenger self-declaration forms at airports and all other ports of entry. Kumar also clarified that there had been no death in India from Covid. The clarification came after some media reports attributed a death in Bengal’s Mushidabad to Covid.

Later today, the Cabinet Secretary took a video conference with Chief Secretaries of all states and UTs.

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