mumbai

Updated: Mar 22, 2020 12:43 IST

Four family members of a 68-year-old female patient who worked as a domestic help in Mumbai have tested negative for the coronavirus disease, or Covid-19, authorities have said.

The woman, who lives in a slum in central Mumbai’s Mulund, was found Covid-19 positive two days ago.

At the time, it was said to potentially be India’s first case of Covid-19 in a slum, sending alarm bells ringing because the low-income neighbourhood is cramped with many residents living in single-room tenements, making it tough to isolate the contagion.

The woman contracted the disease after coming in contact with a person who had returned from the United States, said a senior official from the state civic health department on condition of anonymity.

The department traced four high-risk contacts and ‘ five ‘low-risk contacts’ and advised them to get tested at the Kasturba Hospital to avoid further spread.

The high-risk contacts – her son,daughter-in-law, and two grandsons – were found negative late on Saturday. The five low-risk contacts have been advised two-week home quarantine.

“Though the results of high-risk contacts were found negative, we have advised them home quarantine and to avoid large gatherings. Our team will keep watch on them for next 14 days,” said the officer quoted above.

“Contact number of doctors from Kasturba hospital have been shared with them so that then can call the doctors if they need,” he added.

As a precautionary measure, the civic body has sanitised the entire slum – where roughly 20,000 people live -- and a team of health staffers deployed to check possible symptoms of coronavirus in slum dwellers. At least 500 people have been inspected as of Saturday and no one was found symptomatic.