HYDERABAD: A 35-year-old Sudanese national was placed under observation in an isolation ward at Gandhi Hospital on Thursday after routine thermal screening at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA), Hyderabad, detected a fever.
According to airport officials, the traveller, who had recently visited Uganda and South Sudan, arrived in Hyderabad for a scheduled knee surgery. After recording a temperature of around 100°F during screening at RGIA, he was shifted to Gandhi Hospital for observation.
Talking to TNIE, Dr Vamsi Krishna, nodal officer for Ebola preparedness at Gandhi Hospital, said, “The passenger was shifted to a separate isolation room as a precautionary measure.
Medical teams collected blood, urine and swab samples and sent them to the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) for testing and we are waiting for the report. Any positive or suspicious findings will be sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, for confirmation.”
Patient is currently stable & under observation: Doctor
He said the individual is currently stable and has not exhibited fever or any other symptoms since admission.
The nodal officer also emphasised that no conclusions can be drawn until the test results are received. “The patient is asymptomatic and under observation. It may not necessarily be a serious infection; it could be something else. We are conducting routine investigations and will decide the course of treatment after receiving the reports. We are also trying to obtain detailed medical and travel information from the patient, who is not fluent in English, and translators are being arranged to facilitate communication,” he added.
Officials, however, noted that 58 passengers who arrived in Hyderabad from Ebola-affected countries showed no symptoms.