Untraced sources of four Covid-19 patients in Chandigarh add to authorities’ worry

As the tricity remains under lockdown for Covid-19 for over three weeks now, health authorities are racing against time to come up with answers to “untraced” sources of the disease as the count of patients with no known history of contact with people from infected zones has gone up to four.

Teams tracing the 113 contacts of a Panjab University teacher and Chandigarh’s 19th positive case are clueless about the disease source.

As of now, the search has narrowed down to the teacher’s 64-year-old mother-in-law, who came down from Delhi to help during her daughter’s pregnancy and childbirth.

The teacher who tested positive last Friday, is in the intensive care unit of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER). Even as his wife (32) and infant daughter are negative, the mother-in-law and elder daughter (8) have tested positive. “We have not been able to trace his source. The man has no travel or contact history,” says Chandigarh health secretary Arun Gupta.

The only man with history of foreign travel the teacher had come in contact with on March 10 had tested negative. So, the “only possibility is that he might have caught infection from his mother-in-law, who came from Delhi,” Gupta adds.

Contacts of teacher’s relative being tested

However, even as the Chandigarh administration had written to Delhi to test the woman’s family, calling it a case of community spread would be wrong, Gupta cautions.

A PGIMER based epidemiologist, however, does not agree, saying: “We are afraid this could be a case of community spread.”

Indicating that there is no need to panic, the epidemiologist says other indications of community spread are not holding true for Chandigarh. “For instance, we are not finding corona positivity among patients with severe acute respiratory infections (SARI). But, it’s worrisome if source is not found.”

Sources of three more cases in Mohali that are yet to be traced include the panch of Jawaharpur village in Dera Bassi, because of whom 38 more cases turned positive, pushing up Mohali district’s tally to 56, the highest in Punjab.

The source of infection of the tricity’s first fatality, a 65-year-old Nayagaon man who died on March 31, also remains a mystery even though 35 of his contacts were traced.

On April 7, the reports of another 78-year-old from the Mundi Kharar area of Mohali district, a woman, came out positive after her death. Only 15 of her contacts could be traced, of whom two tested positive.

Markaz link

“We are trying our best to find the primary source, but have not been able to do so,” says Dr Manjit Singh, civil surgeon, Mohali. “ As far as the panch of Dera Bassi is concerned, we are suspecting that he came in contact with a worker who in turn came in contact with one of the attendees of the Tablighi Jamaat’s Markaz event at Nizamuddin in Delhi last month, but we have not confirmed this yet,” he adds.

Apart from the four, the Panchkula health department is also struggling to trace the source of infection of the a 44-year-old woman living in the city’s Sector 15, who tested positive on Tuesday, following which eight of her family members were also infected.

(With inputs from Yuvraj Kaushal)