6 cases from Patna among 68 from Bihar, tally up to 345

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Updated: Apr 28, 2020 10:24 IST

Six new cases of coronavirus were reported from Patna, as Bihar registered 68 cases Monday, its biggest single day spike so far, pushing its total tally of cases to 345, with two deaths so far.

Munger reported the most number of cases after 22 people tested positive Monday from Sadar Bazar in Jamalpur sub-division, which has been listed under ‘red zone’. Rohtas reported 16 cases, forcing the district administration to enforce containment measures. The other cases during the day were reported from Bhojpur (7), Madhubani (5), Aurangabad (5), Lakhisarai (3), and one each from Saran, Nawada, Darbhanga and Purnia.

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Four of the six cases in Patna were tracked to a contact from Khajpura, said Patna district magistrate Kumar Ravi.

“The four belong to a private firm, which is engaged in housekeeping and sanitary work at the Patna airport. They were tracked as contacts of an executive of a firm, which handles operations of ATMs,” said Ravi.

The person, who tested positive for the virus around two days back, worked at the airport and resided as a tenant in the house of the CMS executive at Khajpura.

“We had collected samples of 39 people on Saturday after a cleaning staff at the airport was detected to be positive. Four of those samples have now tested positive,” added Ravi.

Besides, a two-year-old male child from Naubatpur, undergoing treatment at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS), has also tested positive for the virus during a routine check-up there. The child was admitted to the hospital for eye ailment, the DM said.

The sixth case from Patna was of a 23-year-old male, studying at Manipal in Karnataka.

The young student had travelled from Manipal to Jaipur and then to New Delhi, before boarding the Rajdhani Express on March 16 to reach Patna. The fact that the young man had tested positive after 45 days of his travel to New Delhi, has baffled health officials now.

His location was tracked to Nizamuddin in New Delhi as part of around 4,000 mobile numbers sent by the home ministry to the health department. These were numbers picked up through mobile tower location of those having visited anywhere near 3-5 kms of the Nizamuddin Markaz.

Meanwhile, authorities would now collect samples of officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) as well after five staff of an outsourced firm, tasked with housekeeping work, had tested positive.

Though the government denied community transmission of the virus, state health authorities had not been able to ascertain the source of infection in any of the 68 cases detected on Monday.

In his tweets, principal secretary, health, Sanjay Kumar, said, “We are ascertaining their infection trail.”

It has been more than a fortnight he shared data on contact tracing of Covid-19 patients.

As per the last data Kumar shared through a tweet, 60% cases were contracted by patients who came in contact with infected person; 27% had international travel history; 9% had domestic travel history from infected areas while contact tracing was pending in 4% cases. The number of Covid-19 cases in Bihar then was 70.

The health department, however, had neither updated that data nor was updating on daily basis information about new red or containment zones in the state after the number of cases had shown a sudden spike in the past couple of days. The state had reported 53 cases on April 24. As per government data, Bihar had reported 164 cases in the last five days till Sunday.

Darbhanga and Purnia were the new districts which reported positive cases of the virus.

Of Bihar’s 345 cases, Munger reported 90, followed by Patna (39), Nalanda (34), Siwan (30), Buxar (25), Rohtas (31), Kaimur (14), Gopalganj (12), Begusarai (9), Bhojpur (9), Aurangabad (7), Gaya (6), Bhagalpur, East Chamapran, Madhubani (5 each), Arwal, Saran, Nawada, Lakhisarai (4 each), Banka, Vaishali, (2 each), Madhepura, Jehanabad, Darbhanga, Purnea (1 each).

Fifty-seven people had so far recovered from the disease and discharged from government facilities so far in the state.