At least a dozen Jharkhand residents, primarily students pursuing higher studies in China, are under scanner over coronavirus threat across the globe, officials from the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) said on Thursday.

Fifty per cent of the suspects in Jharkhand so far are from Garhwa. Out of the 12 suspects who have travelled from China to Jharkhand, six are from Garhwa, three from Ranchi, two from Jamshedpur and one from Jamtara, said IDSP Director Rakesh Dayal. However, samples of only two suspects, both from Ranchi, were tested and they came out negative, he added.

“None of the suspects in Jharkhand have shown any symptoms of the viral infection so far. All Jharkhand residents who have travelled to China in the recent past are under scanner,” said Dayal, adding that the samples of only those suspects who show symptoms of viral infection will be sent for testing. However, samples of all Jharkhand residents who have visited Wuhan city in China since the Coronavirus outbreak will be mandatorily sent for tests as per the protocol, Dayal said.

Wuhan city in China is the epicenter of the Novel Coronavirus – a mysterious new virus that has killed more than 25,000 people across the world and infected at least 1.5 lakh. The virus has infected people in the USA, UK, Thailand, India and many other parts of the world. India has reported only three cases of the deadly virus so far, all from Kerala – a State that has declared Novel Coronavirus as a State emergency.

“We have to understand that any person travelling from China to Jharkhand will be put under scanner in order to prevent the virus from spreading. By now, we have not come across any Jharkhand resident with a travel history to Wuhan city of China. The people under scanner here visited other provinces of China,” said Dayal.

By now, Jharkhand has sent samples of two suspects to the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Virology (ICMR-NIV) in Pune and both were tested negative for Coronavirus. Jharkhand sounded a precautionary alert for Coronavirus, which infects the respiratory tract of patients and causes symptoms similar to common flu, on January 24.

Since there are no international airports in Jharkhand, the State does not have a provision for screening passengers for the virus at the airport. However, agencies in the cities from where these passengers will take a connecting flight to Ranchi will inform the concerned department here if any person is suspected to have contracted the virus, officials said.

According to the official website of the World Health Organisation (WHO), on December 31, WHO was alerted to several cases of pneumonia in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. The virus did not match any other known virus. This raised concern because when a virus is new, it is not known how it may affect people, One week later, on January 7, Chinese authorities confirmed that they had identified a new virus. The new virus is a coronavirus, which is a family of viruses that include the common cold, and viruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). This new virus was temporarily named 2019-nCoV.