GUWAHATI: A four-and-half-year-old girl in Assam tested positive for novel coronavirus during preliminary medical examinations. However, to reconfirm it, the authorities sent the sample to the Regional Medical Research Centre under the Indian Council of Medical Research at Lahowal in Dibrugarh for laboratory testing.
The state’s Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, "We still cannot say it is a COVID-19 positive case." No other positive case has been recorded in Assam or elsewhere in the North-East so far. The child had returned from Bihar along with her sister and mother by a train on March 19.
"There was one positive result in JMCH (Jorhat Medical College and Hospital) lab. We have sent the sample to ICMR laboratory, Lahowal for recheck," Jorhat District Magistrate Roshni Aparanji Korati told this newspaper.
She said that ASHA, ANM and MPW workers visited the family on March 20 and brought them to the JMCH as the girl exhibited symptoms. A sample was taken and tested and the result came on Saturday. "We have started contact tracing. Everybody is being placed under home isolation, including the ASHA etc. The family has been shifted to JMCH isolation ward," Korati added.