Image Source: PTI

A 20-year-old Odisha student tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday, becoming second person from the state to have coronavirus. This comes four days after a 33-year-old computer engineer, who returned from Italy, tested positive for Covid-19. Official sources said the student - the state’s second case - had returned from United Kingdom on Wednesday and had got himself admitted in AIIMS Bhubaneswar. His was the only positive sample among the 14 tested at Regional Medical Research Centre in Bhubaneswar on Thursday night.
AIIMS Bhubaneswar director Dr Gitanjali Batmanabane said that the 20-year-old patient has now been kept in isolation ward of the hospital. “He was under quarantine since 18th. We have asked all primary contacts of the patient to go under quarantine. Somebody who had touched the patient or living with the patient are the primary contacts. We are still trying to identify all his contacts. We need to be worried about them. We are going strictly as per the guidelines of the Government of India on Covid-19,” said Batmanbane. There are unofficial reports of the patient being the son of a high-ranking official of AIIMS Bhubaneswar who had over last few days attended meetings of state government on ways to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The AIIMS director, however, refused to confirm whether the patient was related to anyone in the hospital.
Batmanbane said from March 21, they would reduce the number of surgeries in the hospital and undertake only those that are very essential. “Already the number of OPD patients in our institute has gone down by 80 per cent. We are assessing the situation,” she said. On March 15, a 33-year-old youth of Bhubaneswar studying computer science in Italy’s Milan had tested positive for coronavirus, becoming the first case in Odisha. The youth arrived in Delhi on March 6, but showed no symptoms of Covid-19 at the airport. Between March 6 and March 14, when he was finally kept in isolation, he came in contact with more than 100 people. The youth did not quarantine himself and kept hopping from one guesthouse in Delhi to another. By the time he reached Bhubaneswar and showed initial symptoms of the virus, he had come in contact with 129 people, including 76 in Rajdhani Express, which he boarded from Delhi on March 11. The youth is now admitted to a government hospital of Bhubaneswar, and is recovering while his father has tested negative for the virus. So far, 61 samples of Covid-19 suspects in Odisha have been tested of which only two positive case has been detected. Chief spokesman for Covid-19 preparations in Odisha, Subroto Bagchi, said the state has 3183 beds for quarantining people in private and government hospitals in Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Berhampur. The government has prepared more than 4.22 lakh hospital beds across state to tackle possible spurt in Covid-19 patients. Bagchi said so far 2,626 persons who have returned from abroad registered themselves on Odisha government’s Covid-19 portal and 104 helpline for self-quarantine. Meanwhile, Odisha government today shutdown the 11th century Jagannath temple in Puri for pilgrims as well as temples, mosques, churches, gurudwaras and other religious establishments as the state government announced more steps to contain the spread of the disease. Jagannath Temple chief administrator Dr Krishan Kumar said that though the temple would be closed from March 20, all rituals will continue as per schedule. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today wrote to PM Modi requesting him to suspend the National Population Register (NPR) process in view of the coronavirus scare.