Agencies
Kolkata, March 29:
Three women from two different parts of West Bengal on Saturday tested positive for COVID-19, taking to 18 the total number of people suffering from the disease in the state, a senior official of the state health department said.
Two women, aged 76 and 56 years, are residents of Egra in south Bengal’s East Midnapore district while the third, a 54-year-old, is from Kalimpong in Darjeeling district of north Bengal.
Neither of the two women from Egra have recently travelled abroad or to any other state, the official said, adding that it was being ascertained whether the third woman had any recent travel history.
The two women from East Midnapore district are relatives of an elderly man from Nayabad, who also tested positive for COVID-19 and is currently undergoing treatment at a private hospital here, he said.
They had attended a wedding ceremony in Egra where the elderly man was also present. They were at present kept at an isolation ward of a hospital in Egra.
“We have come to know that some foreign returnees had attended the wedding ceremony. That means the contamination happened from the people who came from abroad,” he said.
The two women may be brought to Kolkata on Sunday.
Though details about the third woman from Kalimpong were not revealed by health department officials, it was learnt that she was kept in quarantine at the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital.
Meanwhile, the health condition of the 66-year-old man, who had earlier tested positive for COVID-19 and was put on ventilator support, was stated to be “very critical” at the private hospital here where he is undergoing treatment.
His family members, including a six-year-old granddaughter, have been kept under quarantine at another state-run hospital in the city.
On Saturday morning, health officials brought five members of a family including a nine-month-old baby to the city’s Beliaghata ID hospital from a sub-divisional hospital in Nadia district. They tested positive on Friday.
Eight other persons, who came in contact with these five, were also brought to the city from Tehatta and kept at the quarantine centre in Rajarhat, the official added.
The health officials also began a search in Tehatta for all those who came in contact with these five coronavirus-infected people who also included two children.
“We got in touch with the Railways and asked them to give us details of the passengers who travelled in the adjoining bogeys of the Rajdhani Express on which they travelled recently from New Delhi to Kolkata,” the official said.
District health officials are also looking for their co-passengers in an e-rickshaw and the domestic help working at their home in Tehatta, he added.
“We are trying to spot everyone who came in contact with these people who had held the baby and played with the children. We are also talking to the local people to find out which shops they had visited,” the official added.
The state has reported 18 COVID-19 cases so far, of which one died.
