BENGALURU: Residents of Shivajinagar in Bengaluru have been living in fear, after 30 contacts of a patient tested positive for the Covid-19 infection. Test reports of the primary and secondary contacts of a 34-year-old housekeeping staffer at a quarantine centre where the nurse of Shifa Hospital on Queen’s Road stayed, over the past two days, show the patient to be a super spreader.
On Saturday, the health bulletin showed that 14 secondary contacts of the patient had tested positive, while Friday’s bulletin put the number of cases at 11. Besides this, five other contacts had tested positive earlier, pushing the total number of infections to 30.
Shifaa Hospital was one of the first responder hospitals for Covid-19 cases in March this year. However, on April 3, a resident of Hosahalli in Bengaluru South, a 42-year-old man with Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI), visited Shifaa Hospital as an outpatient, after he had trouble breathing. A Diplomate in National Board final-year student had treated him and prescribed medicines for SARI.
However, on April 4, the SARI patient tested positive for coronavirus, and on April 9, the doctor too showed symptoms, and tested positive on April 12. Some of the staff were sent into quarantine at a hotel near Infantry Road. Following this, a staff nurse tested positive on April 22 and on May 5, the housekeeping staffer at the hotel also tested positive, leading to 30 of his contacts being infected.
According to a health official, the housekeeping employee is a contact of the nurse who tested positive. He is a blue-collar worker who lives in an overcrowded four-storey building which houses about 73 people. All of them are from a low-income background. After the hospital staffer tested positive, all of them were quarantined.
“Of the quarantined people, 12 are primary contacts and the rest are secondary contacts. The swab results are coming out now. While Shifaa Hospital was sealed in April itself, BBMP has sealed Chandni Chowk area, where the building is located. In fact, most of Shivajinagar area is sealed, and we are taking measures to contain the virus. The results coming positive are all been the patient’s secondary contacts and primary contacts,” explained an officer.
This case has pushed up the number of cases in Bengaluru Urban by 14, with the entire state recording 36 positive cases on Saturday. The state’s tally now stands at 1,092. The second highest number of cases is from Kalaburagi, with six cases being contacts of a patient who had Influenza-Like Illness. One case was a contact of a patient from Kalaburagi containment zone, while another had inter-state travel history to Mumbai, Maharashtra.
Three cases from Hassan and three from Shivamogga had inter-state travel history to Mumbai, as did one case from Dharwad district. A case from Mandya had a travel history to Kolar and Bengaluru, and a patient from Udupi had also travelled to Mumbai. The total number of discharged patients on Saturday stood to 16, and the tally of discharged patients stands at 496. The number of deaths is 36, including one non-Covid death.