A 16-year-old girl became Assam’s second COVID-19 casualty on Friday and the State’s largest hospital has been closed for new patients after a post-graduate medical student tested positive on Thursday.
Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the State’s COVID-19 positive count increased to 56 with three more persons, who had returned in a bus from Ajmer in Rajasthan, testing positive. Five other travellers on the bus carrying 42 persons had tested positive on Thursday.
The teenage girl, suffering from anaemia, had on April 27 visited the ESI Hospital in Guwahati after complaining of fever and leg pain. “She was shifted to the staff quarters of the B. Barooah Cancer Institute (BBCI) where her grandmother works, had similar complications along with vomiting and died,” Mr. Sarma said.
Authorities at the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) had directed the BBCI to test samples from the girl for COVID-19 after her death. The results were found to be positive.
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The BBCI staff quarters were subsequently declared a containment zone. The girl’s contacts are being traced to the other hospitals she had visited for treatment.
A 65-year-old man from southern Assam’s Hailakandi was the first victim who died on April 10 .
PG student positive
Mr. Sarma said the GMCH was closed for new patients for the next few days after a post-graduate student, who was working in the laboratory, tested positive on Thursday night.
Two hostels, including the one where the student was staying, were declared containment zones and all residents asked to stay indoors. The GMCH Superintendent was among 386 doctors, nurses, paramedics and others sent to quarantine.
About a dozen villages and localities in southern Assam’s Barak Valley were also declared containment zones after eight passengers who arrived in Silchar from Ajmer on Wednesday tested positive.
“No social distancing norms were followed in the bus permitted to travel by the Ajmer authorities. The passengers were asked to be at home quarantine but swab samples of one person taken as a precaution tested positive and he turned out to wanted in auto theft cases,” Mr. Sarma said.
Bengal travellers
The Assam government has instructed the police not to allow people from the State who have been stranded in West Bengal unless they need critical healthcare.
“We have restricted the entry of vehicles registered in West Bengal as well as Assam-registered vehicles travelling from various destinations from West Bengal,” Mr. Sarma said.
The decision came after a man from the outskirts of Guwahati tested positive on Thursday. He travelled in his car from Midnapore in West Bengal where he had been stranded during the lockdown. Earlier another person from Kokrajhar in western Assam, who returned from Cooch Behar in northern West Bengal, tested positive.
