Efforts to trace co-passengers of city’s first swine flu victim

The Ministry has sent the list of the passengers and has asked to collect their swab samples for test and if found to have symptoms related to swine flu then they are expected to take appropriate precautionary action.

The list gives the addresses and the contact numbers of the six co-passengers. Three of them belong to Lucknow.

“We got the list of six passengers from the Government of India on Thursday night and we have already started working on the list. The list of the passengers,who travelled with the patient in Shatabdi,will be forwarded to respective chief medical officers for further action,” said Dr I S Srivastava,Director General,Medical and Health,Uttar Pradesh.

Sharma,a resident of Lucknow,works in Pune and had returned from the US in the first week of June. He went to Lucknow from Delhi to meet his parents.

In Lucknow,he reported of sore-throat and thus consulted a doctor at the railway hospital,where doctors suspected him to be infected with swine flu. However,before the UP Health Department could trace him,he left for Pune on June 20.

At present,Sharma is admitted in Naidu Hospital in Pune and is likely to be discharged by June 28 as his condition is under control. The test samples of his family members have come negative but they are kept on prophylactic antiviral (oseltamivir) treatment for 10 days.

Sources in the Health Department,Government of India,said since the techie had travelled a long distance,efforts are being made to track as many co-passengers as they can.

“We got the first list of his co-passengers from Ministry of Railways and have forwarded it to the UP Health Department. We are trying to locate other passengers as well,” said a senior officer.