Meanwhile, the ambulance that transported the businesswoman on March 12 has been fumigated as a precaution. (File)

Suspecting that she may have been afflicted by coronavirus disease, a middle-aged businesswoman on landing at Mumbai airport from Frankfurt, Germany, checked into a hotel in Navi Mumbai to undergo self-imposed quarantine instead of going home. With the number of COVID-19 cases on the rise, civic officials have hailed the woman for showing the right attitude towards avoiding community transmission. 

Thirty-one people have tested positive of COVID-19 in Maharashtra till Saturday, while a 71-year-old man, who had returned from Saudi Arabia and was suspected to have coronavirus infection, died during treatment in Buldhana district.

According to civic officials, the woman was on a business trip to Frankfurt. While she had no fever when she landed at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport on March 11 and was cleared thermal scanning, she suffered breathlessness on leaving the airport.

The woman, officials said, decided against going to her residence in Ulhasnagar to prevent the possible transmission of the infection to her family members and neighbours. Instead, she booked a cab and travelled to Navi Mumbai and checked into a hotel in Kopar Khairane.

Dr Santosh Revankar, deputy executive health officer in BMC, said one of her relatives had reached out to him and informed him about her symptoms. “We immediately decided to admit her to Kasturba Hospital and arranged for the logistics to shift her there,” Revankar said.

On March 12, a 108-ambulance brought her to Kasturba Hospital around 1.50 am and her nasal swab was collected for a test.

A real-time polymerase chain reaction test is conducted for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 infection. Her samples were tested negative by the evening and she was discharged later Thursday. “But it shows how aware and responsible she is,” Revankar, who is also handling airport screening of travellers, said.

Passengers are only screened for fever at the airport, but for other symptoms a person has to self-report, he added.

Dr Jayanthi Shastri, head of Kasturba Hospital laboratory, said citizens who have a travel history to coronavirus-affected countries should practice social distancing. “Only then can we control the outbreak. Government alone cannot do everything,” Shastri said.

The government in Italy — one of the countries worst affected by COVID-19 — is charging people with an attempt to murder if they refuse to go to quarantine centres. While India’s Epidemic Disease Act, 1987, allows penalisation for disobeying government orders during an epidemic, civic officials said they are yet to follow Italy’s example and stringently charge people who do not present themselves for quarantine.

On Saturday morning, police traced four suspected patients of coronavirus disease, who had reportedly escaped from an isolation facility in Nagpur’s Mayo hospital a night ago, and sent back to the isolation facility. Three patients, who reportedly escaped from an isolation centre in Ahmednagar Saturday, were also brought back by the police.

Meanwhile, the ambulance that transported the businesswoman on March 12 has been fumigated as a precaution.