JALANDHAR: While Jalandhar has emerged as the biggest hotspot of Covid-19 cases in Punjab, what is worrying health experts is that at least in 10 cases, the source of infection is not known.
Of 78 cases in the district, eight are from rural areas and source was traced in all the cases. However, source of infection could not be traced in the new cases. Even in the case of the vernacular daily, to which around half of the cases in the city are linked, it is not known where and how coronavirus infection began.
On April 13, one patient tested positive from the vernacular daily. Then father of another employee also tested positive, but the employee himself tested negative. Two of the employees, who had gone to their natives places in Himachal Pradesh, also tested positive. Till Sunday night, at least 19 employees from the same office had tested positive. The first case in the city was from Nijatam Nagar area from where 72-year-old woman Swaran Chhabra had tested positive at CMC Hospital and she has already recovered. She was in the frontline of organising a threeday-long affair of an ashram from March 10 to 12, where NRIs and persons from far off places had also participated.
Then Parveen Sharma, father of local Congress leader Deepak Sharma, died just after testing positive for Covid-19. Health department officials suspect that primary source in this case could be Deepak, but his infection source could not be traced. In three cases detected later, exact source could not be known. Quite a few contacts of Deepak have been found positive.
Sources of three more patients who landed at Civil Hospital with severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) is not clear. One patient Sehdev, originally hailing from Maharashtra and living in Basti Gujjan here, died at a private hospital and the sample was found postive afterwards. “We have managed to trace all the further links of these cases but sources from where they got the infection remain unclear,” said Jalandhar civil hospital Covid-19 nodal officer Dr T P Singh. Jalandhar civil surgeon Dr Gurinder Kaur Chawla said there was no link between Covid-19 cases from Nawanshahr and those found in Jalandhar. However, she said she could not comment if this phenomena of sources remaining untraced could be termed community spread.
Of 78 cases in the district, eight are from rural areas and source was traced in all the cases. However, source of infection could not be traced in the new cases. Even in the case of the vernacular daily, to which around half of the cases in the city are linked, it is not known where and how coronavirus infection began.
On April 13, one patient tested positive from the vernacular daily. Then father of another employee also tested positive, but the employee himself tested negative. Two of the employees, who had gone to their natives places in Himachal Pradesh, also tested positive. Till Sunday night, at least 19 employees from the same office had tested positive. The first case in the city was from Nijatam Nagar area from where 72-year-old woman Swaran Chhabra had tested positive at CMC Hospital and she has already recovered. She was in the frontline of organising a threeday-long affair of an ashram from March 10 to 12, where NRIs and persons from far off places had also participated.
Then Parveen Sharma, father of local Congress leader Deepak Sharma, died just after testing positive for Covid-19. Health department officials suspect that primary source in this case could be Deepak, but his infection source could not be traced. In three cases detected later, exact source could not be known. Quite a few contacts of Deepak have been found positive.
Sources of three more patients who landed at Civil Hospital with severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) is not clear. One patient Sehdev, originally hailing from Maharashtra and living in Basti Gujjan here, died at a private hospital and the sample was found postive afterwards. “We have managed to trace all the further links of these cases but sources from where they got the infection remain unclear,” said Jalandhar civil hospital Covid-19 nodal officer Dr T P Singh. Jalandhar civil surgeon Dr Gurinder Kaur Chawla said there was no link between Covid-19 cases from Nawanshahr and those found in Jalandhar. However, she said she could not comment if this phenomena of sources remaining untraced could be termed community spread.
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