NCR: 15 news channel staff in contact chain of one patient test positive

NOIDA: Three days after an employee of a private news channel tested positive for Covid-19, 15 more from the media house and 13 others in NCR cities — all in his contact chain — did so as well. The 15 news channel staff were among 46 working at three companies in Noida — residents of Noida, Ghaziabad, Delhi and Faridabad — to test positive on Monday.
The news channel cases go back to a 39-year-old resident of Laxmi Nagar in Delhi, an employee of the channel, who tested positive on May 15. Following that, 51 contacts of his were tested in Delhi and 28 tested positive — 15 from his office and 13 from Delhi, Ghaziabad and Faridabad. “The district administrations have been informed and they are following the necessary protocol,” Noida district magistrate Suhas LY said.
The place where they worked has been sealed and is being sanitised. The employees who tested positive have been admitted to GIMS. The Noida Covid-19 tally was 31 on Monday, taking the total number of cases to 286. Of those, 87 cases are active.
That included eight employees of mobile manufacturing giant Oppo. One other from the company, a resident of Ghaziabad, also tested positive. Two employees of Vivo, another mobile manufacturer, have also been infected. Test reports of six others — five from Harola Village in Sector 5 and a 40-year-old woman from Sector 78 — also came back positive.
Oppo and Vivo, which had recently resumed operations on a small scale, have suspended operations for now. “Oppo had obtained permission from state authorities to resume production following the MHA directive. As an organization that places the safety of all our employees and citizens at the forefront, we had not only undertaken Covid-19 tests for all employees at manufacturing facility in Greater Noida, but also suspended all operations at the plant,” a statement from the company said.
The incident commander has sealed the premises, which are being sanitised. Employees from the company have been admitted to Sharda Hospital, joint registrar of the hospital, Dr Ajit Kumar, said. The two employees from Vivo who tested positive have also been taken to Sharda Hospital and the manufacturing unit premises have been sealed.
Of the six other cases in Noida, five were contacts of one patient — a resident of Harola Village in Sector 5 — and have been admitted to Child PGI Hospital. The sixth patient, a woman in Sector 78 whose husband works in Delhi, was found positive after a test at a private lab in Delhi.
The second test of a patient from Jalwayu Towers in Sector 47 came back negative, three days after her first test was positive. She is admitted to Apollo Hospital in Delhi.