Three more people, including an Italian national, tested positive for coronavirus in Kerala on Friday.
New Delhi:
An American couple with symptoms linked to coronavirus, who went missing from a hospital in Kerala on Friday, has been traced at the airport in the southern state and put under isolation.
The US citizens, based in London, had fled from hospital in Kerala’s Alappuzha district without informing doctors. Police said they refused to give their samples and details of their passport. They were tracked down at the Kochi international airport and put under isolation.
Three more people, including an Italian national, tested positive for coronavirus in Kerala on Friday, taking the total count of patients in the state under treatment to 19 – the most number of cases in India.
“An Italian tourist has tested positive and is kept in isolation there itself. The other person is a UK-returnee and is in the isolation ward at the medical college hospital,” Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said. The third person is from Thiruvananthapuram, he added.
The first three positive cases in the state were successfully cured and discharged from hospitals last month. At least 270 people are in isolation wards at various hospitals in the state and over 4,000 people under observation, of which 3,910 are under home quarantine.
Kerala has set up three testing facility to tackle the viral infection that has that has infected 1,31,500 people in 116 countries and territories and killed more than 4,900.
India has reported two deaths due to the coronavirus – a 68-year-old Delhi resident became the country’s second victim on Friday.
The Union Health ministry put the number of positive cases at 82, eight more since Thursday night, which includes the woman and a 76-year-old man from Karnataka who became the country’s first coronavirus fatality besides 17 foreign nationals.
Officials, however, maintained that coronavirus is not a health emergency and there is no need to panic.
With inputs from PTI
