lucknow

Updated: Mar 18, 2020 13:01 IST

A doctor at Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow’s leading hospital who was part of the team attending to suspected and positive coronavirus patients, has tested positive for Covid-19, spokesperson of the city’s King George’s Medical University said on Wednesday.

“His sample tested positive for the virus while samples of his 14 other colleagues in the same team tested negative. The doctor who tested positive had collected samples of many patients,” said Dr Sudhir Singh spokesperson KGMU.

This is the first case in Uttar Pradesh where a doctor attending to positive and suspected coronavirus patients has been tested positive.

The country’s first case of a doctor contracting the infection from a patient was reported from Karnataka. A 63-year-old doctor who had treated a 76-year-old man who had returned from Saudi Arabia and was the first Indian to die of the new coronavirus had also tested positive for the disease. The doctor was sent to an isolation ward and his family quarantined.

Wednesday’s fresh case in Uttar Pradesh raises the number of people who have tested positive in the state to 16.

“His colleagues found symptoms and reported the matter after which he was first isolated and samples were taken. His team members were also isolated but as they have tested negative, they shall be out of isolation,” said Prof SN Sankhwar, the chief medical superintendent of the KGMU.

The doctor, who was posted in the department of medicine, was attending to patients in the isolation/treatment ward for coronavirus positive and suspected patients for two weeks.

Over ten suspected and two confirmed positive Covid-19 cases had been admitted here.

A list of contacts of this doctor is being made by the university administration. “Though he was deployed for the isolation ward and instructed to minimise his movements, we are gathering information on people he met in the past few days as precaution,” said Dr Singh.

Lucknow has reported three positive cases, eight in Agra, two in Ghaziabad and three in Noida.

In Lucknow, a woman doctor who came from Canada was tested positive on March 11 and later one of her contacts also tested positive. Three cases from Agra have been declared as treated and were discharged from hospital in New Delhi where they were under treatment. They have, however, been advised to stay in home quarantine for a few days as a precaution.

Prof SN Sankhwar said the team attending to such patients had been given high priority in adopting safety measures that shall be reviewed again now.

Uttar Pradesh has, as a precaution, ordered schools, gyms, swimming pools, cinema halls, multiplexes and anganwadi centres to remain closed.