Fourteen contacts of a coronavirus patient in Bengaluru’s Shivajinagar tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on Saturday. This comes a day after 11 contacts of the same patient tested positive on Friday.

The source patient – referred to as Patient 653 – is a 34-year-old man who was working as a housekeeping staff at Shifa Hospital, which was shut down by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike after a doctor who treated a COVID-19 patient (P196) tested positive for the virus last month. At the time of treatment, P196 who is a 42-year-old patient with Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) had not tested positive. The doctor who treated P196 and later tested positive was a student, and was not aware that all SARI patients had to be tested for SARS-CoV-2 and had sent him home with medication.  

The housekeeping staff or P653 who tested positive for COVID-19 on May 5, was a contact of another nurse in the same hospital who had tested positive on April 22. He was living in a four-storey building with 73 others in a building in Shivajinagar. Since the rent was high and all the residents were from a low income background, they were sharing the space. All 73 were quarantined.

On Friday, 11 of P653’s secondary contacts – all residents of this building – tested positive. The 14 who have tested positive on Saturday are also residents of the same building, confirmed BBMP East Zone Health Officer, Dr Siddappaji. Meanwhile P653’s 12 primary contacts have all tested negative.

The BBMP last week sealed Chandni Chowk where P653’s residence is. Those living in the homes in the vicinity are under home quarantine since May 6 as well.

A total of 1,079 people have tested positive for the novel coronavirus in Karnataka so far. 23 new cases have been reported so far on Saturday, of which 14 are in Bengaluru, all from Shivajinagar.