A festival in a Telangana district bordering Maharashtra involving around 50 people led to an outbreak of 433 cases in a span of only 12 days! This was the biggest outbreak detected in the State this month.
The Director of Public Health cited this as an example to drive home the point on how rapidly coronavirus is spreading. The name of the district was not mentioned at the press conference on Saturday.
Around 20 people from Maharashtra came to the bordering district to celebrate the festival, and they were joined by 30 people from Telangana. On April 4, a few developed symptoms of the infectious disease, and five people went for tests at a Primary Health Centre (PHC) and all of them tested positive.
When the State Health teams took up contact tracing, 34 others tested positive. Dr. Srinivasa Rao said that when further contact tracing was taken up, a total of 433 people spread in three to four villages tested positive up to April 6.
The senior official said that the outbreak, which started with five cases increased to 433 in a span of 12 days.
“Through this, we can understand how fast the virus is spreading,” he said, adding that the virus is spreading through air. A few days ago, he said that one person with the virus can infect a whole family in a span of a few hours, or within a day.
Superintendent of Gandhi Hospital D.M. Raja Rao pointed out that youngsters are being careless by not maintaining precautions.
