Health worker among 7 new Covid cases, Palamu now on virus map

Gaurav Pandey & Divy Khare | TNN | Updated: Apr 26, 2020, 14:44 IST

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RANCHI/BOKARO: Jharkhand reported seven new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, with a frontline healthcare worker — a 46-year-old pathology lab technician in the city’s Kantatoli area — testing positive for the novel coronavirus. The total number of positive cases in Jharkhand now stands at 66. Of these, 51 are active cases, while 13 have recovered and two died during treatment.
Notably, Palamu became the 10th of the 24 districts in the state to be affected by Covid-19 with three cases diagnosed in Leslieganj block on Saturday. In some respite, four of the 10 patients in Bokaro have recovered and were discharged on Saturday.
State health department secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni said: “We detected seven more Covid-19 cases in the state on Saturday. Four are from Ranchi — three from Hindpiri locality and one from Kantatoli. The remaining three are from Palamu.”
The trio from Hindpiri, including two women aged 37 and 49 and a 12-year-old boy, were lodged at the Rims isolation centre and were tested during the on-going contact tracing exercise on Thursday. Two of them, including the boy, are residents of Hydri apartment. The 49-year-old woman is a family member of a patient detected positive after giving birth to a child on Monday, Ranchi SDM Lokesh Mishra told TOI.
The lab technician, the first case in the city’s Kantatoli area, had visited Rims on April 21 and has given his swab samples after he developed symptoms of Covid-19. “We have started a contact-tracing drive in the area and will be screening people and collecting samples,” Mishra said
Meanwhile, four of the nine patients who have recovered were discharged from Bokaro General Hospital on Saturday. The district administration and health department officials gave the four a warm send-off with gifts and bouquets.
All the four patients are Muslim and said they were happy to return home on the first day of the holy month of Ramzan. Doctors, however, advised them to remain in home quarantine for 14 days, avoid fasting and eat healthy food and drink enough water to prevent dehydration.
Bokaro deputy commissioner Mukesh Kumar said, “These four are the first lot to be discharged in the district after making a full recovery. I also thank our real superheroes, the doctors who treated them.”
Dr Gautam, one of the doctors, who treated them said, “The patients were asymptomatic and they were provided healthy vegetarian diet, a good amount of water and vitamins. A couple of them with cough were administered antibiotics.”
One of the patients said, “I am thankful to the doctors and the other hospital staff for taking such good care of us. The love and care we got was more than what we get in our sasural (in-laws house).”