Guwahati/Shillong/Imphal, (Asian independent) With one more coronavirus positive case reported in Assam on early Tuesday, the total number of such cases in the state reached 31 and 38 in the northeast region.
Assam Health and Family Welfare Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, in a tweet, said: “A person from Goalpara, and secondary contact of people associated with Nizamuddin Markaz (in Delhi), has been confirmed as COVID-19 positive. The total number of Covid patients in Assam now stands at 31.”
With the latest case, 38 cases have been found in the northeast so far, these include Assam’s 31 (after one death), two each in Manipur and Tripura, and one each in Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya. Of the 38 people, 31 had attended the Tablighi Jamaat religious congregation held in Delhi’s Nizamuddin area last month.
Assam reported its first coronavirus death in Hailakandi district on April 10. It was also the first in the northeast.
In Meghalaya, a senior doctor of the private Bethany Hospital in Shillong tested positive for novel coronavirus on Monday night, the first Covid-19 case in the mountainous state and first doctor with nCoV infection in the entire northeast region.
Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma on Tuesday said the health authorities have established several hundred contacts of the 69-year-old doctor of the private hospital.
The woman doctor has no travel history except that her son-in-law, who is a pilot, had been to COVID-19 infected countries, and had returned home on March 22.
According to health officials in Shillong, the pilot, however, did not show any symptoms of coronavirus and was an asymptomatic case.
Meanwhile, a 26-year-old youth admitted in the hospital on Tuesday leaped to his death from the window. Officials said that the suicide was related to withdrawal symptoms and psychiatric problems but not coronavirus related.
In Shillong, the District Magistrate has imposed a curfew for 48 hours starting from 6 a.m. of Tuesday to prevent gatherings of people.
In a related development in Manipur, the health authorities in the state on Tuesday traced 11 close contacts of the Shillong-based Air India pilot, who spent three nights in Imphal from March 17 after returning from New York.
Manipur Health and Family Welfare Department’s Additional Director and spokesperson Khoirom Sasheekumar Mangang told IANS over phone that although all the 11 are asymptomatic and under surveillance now, their swab samples are being tested at the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal.
A 23-year-old woman, who had returned from the United Kingdom last month and become the first Covid-19 case in the northeast, has been declared negative and discharged from the hospital on Sunday.
In Mizoram, Health Minister R. Lalthangliana said in Aizawl that a 22-year-old woman from the state has tested positive for novel coronavirus in Mumbai.
“The woman reached Mumbai in February and was admitted to a private hospital with some ailments. As she was suffering from fever, her swab sample was tested and the result was found to be positive on Monday,” he said.
She was then shifted from the private hospital to the ICU of a designated Covid-19 facility, he said.
Health officials in Aizawl said that the 50-year-old Mizo man, who had tested positive last month after he returned from the Netherlands, was still in the Intensive Care Unit of the Zoram Medical College and Hospital in Aizawl.
