DN&V Correspondent
New Delhi, January 31: The country reported its first case of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from Kerala on Thursday. A young woman studying medicine at a university in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, has tested positive for the virus. 2019-nCoV has killed 170 people in China with 7,711 infected worldwide, across more than 20 countries. “The patient tested positive for novel coronavirus and is in isolation in a hospital,” said the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in a statement earlier in the day, adding that she was being closely monitored.
Kerala’s health minister KK Shailaja said the student was hospitalised after she developed symptoms of fever and a sore throat. She was quarantined, along with four others, in the isolation ward of the general hospital in Thrissur. “She is stable; there is nothing to worry,” Shailaja added. The five students, who had returned from Wuhan, had come to the hospital of their own volition. Three of them were shifted to Thrissur Medical College Hospital by Thursday afternoon. Swabs and blood taken from them have been sent for tests. Note: A total of 1,053 poeple are under surveillance in the state.
Priya Abraham, director of Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Virology in Pune informed that 49 samples have been tested till now and one (belonging to the student from Kerala) had tested positive for 2019-nCoV. “Now a next test, known as ‘next-gen sequencing test’, will be done on her sample and the final result will be declared till tomorrow [Friday] evening,” she informed.
Further, India requested China to allow it to send two flights to Wuhan to bring back Indian nationals. The first flight will carry those Indian nationals who are in and around Wuhan, while the second will carry those who are from other parts of Hubei province (Wuhan is its capital). “We have established contact with over 600 Indians across the province and are individually ascertaining their willingness to be repatriated,” according to Union Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar. The Indian embassy in Beijing said India was preparing to evacuate its citizens from Wuhan today.
Also, at a high-level review meeting in Delhi, cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba decided that all those who have come from China after Jan. 15, 2020 will be tested as the virus has an incubation period.
