One nurse and an undergraduate student at Government Medical College, Kozhikode, were among those tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in district on Wednesday. Another medical student, a native of Kannur, too had been found infected here.
According to District Medical Officer V. Jayasree, the total number of COVID-19 patients from Kozhikode has now gone up to 22, half of whom have recovered. Two residents each from Kannur and Kasaragod too had been under treatment here and were discharged.
The nurse, who tested positive for the virus, is an employee of a private hospital in Kozhikode city. She had attended to the Edachery resident, who was infected earlier and was under treatment at that hospital. It is assumed that she got the infection from him. She was on duty from April 5 to 8 and on leave for the next three days. She, along with other staff who attended to him, had been put under quarantine after the Edachery resident was tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on April 11.
She came to the private hospital along with her father by their car on April 20 morning, gave her body fluid samples for lab tests, and returned home. She was shifted to the isolation ward attached to the Government Medical College Hospital on Wednesday after the test results were declared. She doesn’t have any symptoms and her condition is reported to be stable.
The second infected person had travelled by the Nizamuddin-Thiruvananthapuram Express on March 20. She alighted at the Kozhikode railway station on the first platform at 6.30 p.m. on March 22. She was asked to be under home quarantine for two weeks by the screening squad at the station. The Health Department later asked her to continue it for 28 days after it was found that she had been in the same coach with an Alappuzha resident who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on April 3 after attending a Tabligh Jamaat conference in New Delhi.
She completed the quarantine and returned to the medical college to join house surgeon duty on April 20. She was tested positive for the virus during a screening. She is asymptomatic and had been shifted to the isolation ward.
Meanwhile, another 1,413 people completed home isolation and only 3,803 are under observation now. Twenty-eight persons are at the medical college hospital. Eleven were discharged on Wednesday.