People traveling to Jharkhand from countries affected by Coronavirus – a mysterious new virus that has claimed around 100 lives in China and infected nearly 5000 people across the globe – will be kept under surveillance for at least 28 days since landing in Ranchi, officials from the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) said on Tuesday.
The surveillance will be a part of the State’s precautionary mechanism to curtail the spread of the airborne virus in Jharkhand, said IDSP Director Rakesh Dayal. “No suspected cases of Coronavirus have been reported yet in Jharkhand. However, we are taking all precautionary measures to prevent the virus from entering the State. Any person travelling to Jharkhand from China or other countries where the virus has spread will be under surveillance for 28 days as a part of the drill,” Dayal added.
Jharkhand has sounded a precautionary alert for Coronavirus, which infects the respiratory tract of patients and causes symptoms similar to common flu. According to news reports, till Monday, a total of 33,552 passengers arriving in India from China in 155 flights have been screened. Suspected cases have been reported from New Delhi, Kerala, Maharashtra and also neighbouring Bihar – a development that rung the alarm bells in Jharkhand.
Jharkhand shares its borders with Bihar and several thousand people travel from Bihar to Jharkhand every day. The virus can easily enter one’s body through the respiratory tract, which means that a person does not need to have any physical contact with an infected person in order to get infected, doctors said. “There is an international airport in Gaya, Bihar. The suspected case may have come from one of those international flights,” said Dayal.
“Since there are no international airports in Jharkhand, we will 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 us if any person is suspected to have contracted the virus,” said Dayal. No positive cases of the virus have been detected in India so far, he added.
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.
The virus has wreaked havoc in China and also spread to the United States of America and United Kingdom. It has reportedly claimed at least 80 lives in Thailand.
