Agra hospital sealed after 20 patients and health workers test positive, screening on

The number of confirmed cases in Agra has now reached 104 with 89 active cases, while total cases in the state reached 483, including five deaths.

According to Agra District Magistrate Prabhu Narain Singh, 20 people – 16 patients, their attendants and health workers from Agra and four patients from Firozabad—at Paras Hospital have been found infected with coronavirus, so far.

“We have declared the hospital a major hotspot and it has been sealed and sanitised. No new patient was admitted to the hospital after April 6. The contract tracing is on at a war footing and we are ensuring institutional quarantine of all the direct and indirect contacts,” said the DM.

The source of infection at the hospital is considered to be a woman, who was admitted there earlier and was later referred to a Meerut hospital after she tested positive for coronavirus.

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The district administration has also sought a list of doctors, nursing staff and cleaning staff of the hospital along with the information about people connected to them. “It is highly required that the normal protocol of screening and sampling is followed on these people. Residents of Agra are requested that whoever might have visited the hospital OPD and have been admitted or came in contact with any staff from March 22 to April 6 should provide their information on Whatsapp number 8859074040 or the district control room by Monday 2 pm,” an order issued by the DM office read.

District health officials, meanwhile, said that at least 134 contacts have been traced from the hospital and samples of 49 of them, who were close contacts, have been taken. More samples will be taken in the coming days. In the last 24 hours, 232 samples were collected from the district for testing.

According to sources, the number of hotspots has increased in the district to 33.

Till date, 2,144 people have been tested for coronavirus in the district.

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The health bulletin on Sunday said besides 12 from Agra, the rest of the 31 new cases include seven are from Saharanpur, four from Firozabad, three from Meerut, two from Baghpat and one each from Moradabad, Mathura and Muzaffarnagar.

Eighteen of the 31 cases have links to Tablighi Jamaat, and at least 272 of the total patients are connected to the Delhi Markaz event held in March, the bulletin added.

Govt ramps up testing among migrants

The government has stepped up testing among migrant workers, who returned to the state following the lockdown and have been kept at shelter homes across the district. On Saturday, an 18-year-old migrant worker from Bihar, who was at a shelter home in Bhadohi, tested positive for coronavirus, leading to concern about the spread of the virus among migrant workers. The number of tests has been increased further in the state to almost 2,000 per day, and the plan is to increase it even more in the days ahead to identify and isolate any coronavirus-infected person and contain the spread of the virus.

“We have made a significant increase in the number of testing and now we are collecting around 2,000 samples every day and the plan is to increase that further. On Saturday, we were able to test more than 1,600 samples. Initially, we had started from 150-200 samples in one day,” said Principal Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad. At present, there are at least 14 testing centres in the state.

Additional Chief Secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi, meanwhile, said that more than 1.25 lakh people are living in 5,241 shelter homes throughout the state. More than 8,084 people are in institutional quarantine.