IAF officer is UP’s first Zika patient, 200 samples from Kanpur sent to NIV, Pune

KANPUR: The first patient of Zika virus in Uttar Pradesh has been detected in Kanpur after a Pune laboratory late Saturday confirmed the infection on a 57-year-old warrant officer of the Air Force Station here.
Chief medical officer, Kanpur, Nepal Singh, said, the officer was being treated at 7 Air Force Hospital in the district with high fever and his blood samples were sent to National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, after his body temperature remained alarmingly high for a week.
At least 200 more samples of those in contact with the patient and those with similar symptoms have been dispatched to the Pune lab and isolated in their homes. A team of health experts from Delhi has been rushed to Kanpur to contain the spread of the contagion even as UP health department constituted two medical teams on Sunday.
A team headed by additional CMO Dr Subodh Prakash went to Pardevanpur Pokharpur locality of Kanpur, where the officer resides, and collected samples of 200 people, including his wife, son and daughter. His family, however, lives in Pune and Bangalore and are currently present in Kanpur. The second team inspected 7 Air Force Hospital and directed fogging and sanitisation.
District magistrate, Kanpur, Vishak G, said all necessary steps were being taken after confirmation of the first zika positive patient in UP.
“An emergency meeting of medical college doctors will be held on Monday and civic staff have been directed to launch a fogging exercise with mosquito repellents. The virus does not spread like Covid, it’s vector-borne like dengue,” the DM said.
The first Zika infection was confirmed in Kerala on July 8. As per a WHO report, the zika viral RNA was detected through RT-PCR testing at National Institute of Virology Pune in a blood sample collected from a 24-year-old pregnant woman in Trivandrum.
On July 31, Maharashtra too reported its first zika case from Belsar village in Pune district when a 50-year-old woman tested positive.
Protection against mosquito bites during the day and early evening is key to preventing spread of infection. Aedes mosquitoes breed in small collections of water around homes, schools, and workplaces and it’s important to eliminate these sites by appropriate methods.