No case of Ebola in India: Health Minister
World Health Organization had sounded an international emergency on Aug 8 but before that the Minister had placed India’s surveillance and tracking systems on full alert.
“Till now, 12,257 passengers have been screened at various international airports. Several departments of the central governments are working in tandem with state governments to ensure total surveillance. I personally inspected the arrangements at Bangalore International Airport on Thursday,” the Minister said.
Reports appearing in some media about a Nigerian national being testing “positive” for EVD in New Delhi’s Dr Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital have been denied by the Minister.
“Our vigilant officials did indeed send a person to RML Hospital. His blood samples were sent to National Centre for Disease Control. (NCDC) and National Institute of Virology, Pune. We are assured that they tested negative and there is no cause for worry,” Harsh Vardhan said.
The samples were subjected to Antigen Elisa and RT-PCR tests. In addition, scientists at the Pune facility carried out sequencing and all tests confirmed that the Nigerian national was free of the dreaded Ebola virus.
Harsh Vardhan reassured the people that there is no cause for panic. “We have systems in place for tracking anybody with remotest symptoms of EVD throughout the 21-day danger period. Luckily the disease is not air borne and therefore the infrastructure of prevention will easily arrest its spread”.
Meanwhile, WHO has reported that worldwide 2,127 EVD cases have been detected till August 13 and the total fatalities is 1,145.
Support Our Journalism
We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism
IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.
