At least 272 suspects of COVID-19 were admitted in isolation wards of various hospitals across Jharkhand as of Saturday, an official communiqué from the National Health Mission (NHM) said. On the other hand, a whopping 73,000 odd emigrates with travel history to different affected States in India were kept in home-quarantine across Jharkhand, it added.
While Jharkhand is among the few States that have not reported even a single case of Coronavirus, doctors and health workers here have collected samples of at least 179 patients so far and 175 of them have tested negative.
The lab test reports of the remaining four suspects are awaited, NHM officials said. Besides the 73,000 travelers on home-quarantine and 272 at hospitals, the State has also maintained surveillance on 911 passengers – this mostly includes people who have traveled from foreign countries, sources in NHM said. Out of the 911 passengers under surveillance, 163 have completed their observation period of 28 and came out asymptomatic, health officials said.
The number of travelers identified in Jharkhand witnessed an over 50 per cent increase in 48 hours or so. The number of such “emigrates” reported on Thursday was 45,000 and it rose to 73,000 on Saturday – a pattern that indicates that many residents of other States have traveled to Jharkhand after the Coronavirus outbreak, officials from the Health Department said.
On Saturday, health workers here collected samples of 26 suspects and the lab test reports of 22 of them came out negative, the NHM said in an official statement issued on Saturday evening. Some doctors have also raised concerns over the lack of testing facilities in Jharkhand. They said that the lack of testing could be a reason for no reportage of positive cases.The President of Indian Medical Association’s (IMA) Jharkhand Chapter has also written to the health secretary, Nitin Madan Kulkarni, here raising concern over the testing procedure followed in Jharkhand.
In his letter, he said that the travelers were screened with a thermal scanner, and the ones who take paracetamol may not get identified even if they have fever. He also said that asymptomatic carriers of the virus may pass on the disease to other people, and therefore, the administration must put every traveler under strict surveillance.
Meanwhile, the State has set up isolation wards with a total of 1469 beds across Jharkhand. The figures include the beds in Government hospitals, private hospitals and other facilities. A 243-bed isolation centre has also been set up at Khelgaon in Hotwar to treat patients if there is a spike in the number of cases in Jharkhand.
As the country is under a lockdown for 21 days, the virus, which entered India through Kerala, has already infected nearly 1000 people and claimed 19 lives in he country.
Coronavirus – a mysterious virus that was first reported in Wuhan City of China – has spread to most of the European nations and claimed several thousand lives.
It has also wreaked havoc on USA – a country that has far better health facilities than India.
