Source of 19 coronavirus cases in Amritsar district still untraced

Amritsar Two days after the Punjab health department began collecting blood samples from people in four vulnerable districts under the ‘Community Transmission Surveillance Programme’ to find if the community transmission stage of Covid-19 has started in the state, there are 19 cases in Amritsar where there is no history of foreign or domestic travel or contact with any covid-19 positive patients.

Amritsar has 315 positive cases to date, with 295 cured. There have been five deaths and 15 active patients, as on date. Some of those whose source of infection could not be traced have been discharged. The health department has started the trial in Patiala, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Gurdaspur districts and Amritsar is not on the list.

Amritsar civil surgeon Dr Jugal Kishore said, “To date, the district has reported 19 cases of community transmission whose source of infection are still unclear. These cases were tested for covid-19 in flu corners when they had shown symptoms of the disease. The four cases that came on Thursday are also community transmission, as these patients have no foreign travel history. The patients had not even met any identified coronavirus patient. Their source of infection is untraced.”

The four tested positive on Thursday were a 15-year-old girl; a 60-year-old man from Katra Dulo area of the walled city; a 26-year-old man of Dashmesh Nagar and a two-and-a-half-month-old boy. The infant tested positive after his death at Government Medical College and Hospital (GMDH), Amritsar.

The civil surgeon added, “Contact tracing of community transmission cases is on. Samples of close contacts of the four patients reported on Thursday have been sent for testing. There could be more community transmission cases in the district or state, who are asymptomatic and do not know that they are infected. Social distancing norms are critical now.”

“Of 97 samples tested on Thursday, only four tested positive. On Wednesday, all 100 random samples tested negative. Even as we see a lot of negative reports, cases continue to be reported from the wider community,” said a health official, on the condition of anonymity.