A Trinidad resident, apprehended along with 17 other foreign nationals from a mosque in Hindpiri last month, tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday, health officials said. He attended the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in New Delhi and was reportedly hiding when the police apprehended him in March from Hindpiri – the hotspot of Coronavirus in the State capital, they added.
"The Trinidad man tested positive in his second test. He was apprehended along with 17 other foreign nationals from Hindpiri last month," said Health Secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni. "No other foreign national from the group tested positive on Saturday," he added.
Meanwhile, a former Jharkhand bureaucrat, originally a resident of Bariatu, tested positive for COVID-19and died in New Delhi while undergoing treatment for other age-related ailments, health officials said. He, however, will be not be counted as a case in Jharkhand as he was tested positive in the national Capital and not anywhere within the periphery of Jharkhand, they added.
"He tested positive in New Delhi while undergoing treatment. We are following the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) in Ranchi since he was a resident of the city," said a health official, requesting anonymity. "The hospitals where he underwent treatment here will be sanitised, and some of the staff in those hospitals will also be quarantined," he added.
Health workers and doctors who were involved in treating the former bureaucrat in a private hospital in Ranchi were reportedly quarantined on Saturday, sources said. However, there was no official confirmation on the number of doctors and health workers quarantined.
The Trinidad man who tested positive on Saturday is the second foreign national in the lists of Coronavirus patients here. Jharkhand's first case –a 22-year-old Malaysian woman who attended the Tablighi Jamaat congregation– was among the 18 foreign nationals apprehended from Hindpiri last month. She tested positive on March 31. Out of the 18 foreign nationals apprehended, two have tested positive for COVID-19 so far, officials said.
By Saturday, the number of Coronavirus cases in Jharkhand reached 35. The figure includes to patients who lost their battle with COVID-19 and died earlier this month. One of the diseases is from Ranchi and the other from Bokaro.
The National Health Mission (NHM) did to release the official Coronavirus bulletin for Jharkhand by the time this report was filed on Saturday. NHM has been assigned with the task of compiling all the Coronavirus data in State on a daily basis.