by Tahir Bhat
SRINAGAR: With the Kashmir region playing second fiddle to Kerela in the Coronavirus density ladder at 5.28 positive cases per million of population, the hospitals are getting into battle gear to manage the rush. Authorities have already identified 35000-bed quarantine facility across Jammu and Kashmir.
“We collected 80 samples today,” Dr M Salim Khan of the Government Medical College said. “All the 24 samples that we tested overnight proved negative.”
However, Khan said they had tested four samples that had reached their BSL-3 laboratory and all of them were positive. These included two samples forwarded by the District Hospital in Pulwama and two by the Jawahar Lal Nehru Memorial Hospital in Srinagar.
The two new cases were from Bemina. They are two persons who had returned from Umrah in the same batch from which the first positive case was detected. The batch had already four positive cases.
Unlike the Bemina cases, the two Shopian cases shared a different travel history. One of them is from Sedow village and another from Ramnagri. They were already admitted to the District Hospital Pulwama.
The travel history suggested that they had gone to attend a religious meeting in Delhi on February 8, and then they reported back to their Bemina Markaz on March 18, and spent many days in a Bemina mosque in Rathpora up to March 24. Reports from Shopian said that they reached their respective home on March 25 morning and by 11 am both of them were unwell. They were driven to the District hospital the same day and were admitted. Now, both of them are positive and are in the isolation ward in District Hospital Pulwama. Hospital records have linked them to an established positive case in Srinagar.
The health authorities had set up a quarantine facility in the Primary Health Centre Tukroo. There were 11 cases, all the individuals who returned from Umrah in the group which eventually proved infected. Medical authorities in Shopian told Kashmir Life that 10 of the 11 remained asymptomatic throughout and have been sent into home quarantine. The eleventh is a family who is suffering from urinary infection and was admitted to the district hospital in Pulwama.
Interestingly, Kashmir’s first case – a resident of Khayam in Srinagar, is recovering and has tested negative in the SKIMS. Of the patients admitted in the Chest Disease Hospital, all the positive case are doing better but none of them has completed the basic mandatory 14 days.
In SKIMS, Dr Farooq Ahmad Jan, the medical superintendent said, four samples revealed positive results. These included one each from Bandipore and Budgam and two from Srinagar. Some of them had flown from outside and some had Delhi travel history.
“We admitted 50 suspected patients in the quarantine facility,” Dr Jan said. “Their samples were collected and the results will come in a day or two.”
Now Jammu and Kashmir have 49 active cases – 37 of them in Kashmir. These include 21 in Srinagar, 8 in Bandipora, two each in Baramulla and Shopian, three in Budgam and one in Pulwama. Kashmir has already lost two elderly citizens to the Coronavirus and two – including one from Jammu, on way to recovery.
Jammu has 12 cases including six in Jammu city, three each in Udhampur and Rajouri. In Ladakh, that is a separate UT, there are 10 active cases.
