Coronavirus in India: Kerala on high alert after third citizen confirmed infected
Thiruvananthapuram/IBNS: After declaring Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) as state calamity, the Kerala government has put all its health machineries on high alert as all three confirmed cases in India so far were reported from this southernmost state, senior health officials said.
"After two patients were tested positive for Coronavirus in Thrissur and Alapuzha districts in Kerala, the state government had declared 2019-nCoV as a state health emergency days ago. Yesterday, the third case of the nCoV infection was confirmed from Kasargode district," the official told IBNS.
"All our machineries are on high alert and senior officials are monitoring the situation closely to deal the Coronavirus outbreak," the health officer added.
According to reports, all three nCoV victims are Wuhan university students and they recently came back to their hometowns following the massive Novel Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, the epicentre of the infections in China.
An official of Kerala's health department said that these three nCoV positive patients were undergoing treatments in the isolation wards of Kanhangad district hospital, Alappuzha Medical College and Thrissur Medical College.
"Health conditions of these three students are stable," the officer said.
"Dealing with Novel Coronavirus is not very easy as there is no medicine available for the infection and either doctors or researchers are not sure how many healthy persons can be infected by one nCoV positive patient and when," the officer added.
"However, our department is trying their best to identify and isolate nCoV infected patients if there is anyone else."
The government of Kerala confirmed that 1,999 people, who had a travel history from China and other affected countries in past few months, had been screened and currently they are under observation.
"Of these 1,999 people, 75 are in isolation wards of various hospitals across Kerala and the remaining 1,924 have been kept under home quarantine," a senior state health official said.
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Meanwhile, multiple other states in India, which have direct or connected flight routes from/to China (specially Wuhan), have directed all their health officials to put maximum efforts to fight the nCoV infection.
According to U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is a coronavirus identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness and was first detected in Wuhan, China where more than 400 lives have ben lost so far.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that more than 17,392 people had been infected with Novel Coronavirus globally and 17,238 of them were from China.
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