The fishing harbour and Ward 15 at Chellanam have been declared containment zones and over a hundred people across the district quarantined, after a 64-year-old woman, whose family members work at the harbour, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on Friday.
She developed fever on June 19 and had visited the local primary health centre. She later visited a private hospital at Chellanam where her scans showed symptoms of pneumonia. She was admitted to the Ernakulam General Hospital on June 29 and since she had no travel history and was not on any primary contact list, she received treatment there for pneumonia without being sent to a COVID care centre, health officials said.
As many as 72 staff members and doctors at the General Hospital have gone into quarantine and antigen tests were conducted among them on Friday. All their tests have returned negative. A second layer of staff has been deployed to sustain hospital functions.
Eight patients who had been in the hospital ward that the woman had been admitted to and the staff at the health centre have also been quarantined. She had taken up work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) on June 22 and 27.
Twenty-nine people who worked with her have been asked to go into quarantine, while the private hospital she visited is temporarily closed.
Chellanam panchayat president Mercy Josy said the harbour had been closed as a precautionary measure from Friday morning onwards after the pregnant wife of one of the fishers had tested positive in Cherthala, in nearby Alappuzha district. The fisherman, who frequented the harbour, and had 11 people from Chellanam working on his boat, had developed fever two days ago and his test results were awaited, she said. He had last taken his boat out on June 27, she added. The people working on his boat have gone into quarantine.
The husband and son of the 64-year-old woman who tested positive on Friday worked at the harbour and she might have acquired the infection from there, said health officials.
Positive cases
A two-year-old child and 11-month-old infant who returned from New Delhi by flight are among the 17 positive cases in the district on Friday. Two of their close relatives have also tested positive.
A 38-year-old who returned by road from Bengaluru and his close contact have tested positive, besides another 64-year-old who returned from Bengaluru by flight. A 25-year-old who returned from Qatar, a 26-year-old native of Vengola who returned from Dubai, a 47-year-old who returned from Pune, a native of Kothamangalam who returned from Sharjah and a 27-year-old who returned from Delhi by flight have also tested positive.
Ernakulam market
As many as 136 people have been tested from the area around Broadway and the Ernakulam market. Nine tests have returned negative results. The rest are awaited and there were no fresh positive cases from the area on Friday.
Meanwhile, 11 people, including KSRTC staff and an employee at a photocopy shop, remain in quarantine in Angamaly after a KSRTC bus conductor on duty in the area tested positive in his home town of Malappuram earlier.
