Two families in Kerala, both of whom have come to the state from Italy, have tested positive for coronavirus, according to the latest reports given by Health Minister KK Shailaja on Tuesday evening. There are now a total of 14 confirmed cases of the coronavirus disease COVID-19 in the state.
Two new cases have been tested positive since the last update on Tuesday morning. They are the parents of the three-year-old child who had tested positive on Monday. They belong to Kannur in Kerala and the mother of the child works as a nurse in Italy. They had returned to Kochi on Saturday and had been quarantined immediately as the child had fever. Though the child's results came yesterday, both the parents were confirmed to be positive only on Tuesday evening. “This was expected since the child was already infected with the virus,” the minister said. All three of them are stable.
The other family is from Pathanamthitta. Five members of the family have tested positive, including the three persons – a 55-year-old man, his 53-year-old wife and their 26-year-old son – who had come from Italy on February 29. They had failed to alert the authorities about travelling from a coronavirus-infected country. The couple's daughter and husband, who had come to the airport to pick them up are also positive for coronavirus. The other two members of the family who have tested positive are the aged parents of the man – 85 years old and 96 years old – and that is a reason for concern since they have age-related issues. Minister Shailaja has however stated that all the people under observation are presently stable.
Other than the close family members mentioned above, two other relatives of this family, who were also their neighbours have been infected.
“Everyone so far is stable, only concern is about the 85 year old and the 96 year old, admitted at the Kottayam Medical College. They have age related problems already. One of them had a slight variation in ECG, but is now believed to be stable,” the minister said.
As of now 1495 people are under observation in the state – out of which 1236 are home quarantined and 259 are in various hospitals, the minister updated. “We had sent 980 samples of suspected cases for NIV testing, out of which 815 have tested negative.”
Minister Shailaja said that so far only the Alappuzha Virology Lab in the state was used for testing the samples but now the Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode medical colleges have also received permission to start testing. Nine samples were tested in Kozhikode all of which turned out to be negative. Testing will also begin in Thiruvananthapuram from Wednesday. In addition, the government have also sought permission from the Centre to allow testing in the state public health lab, Thrissur Medical College and the Rajiv Gandhi biotechnology institute.
On Tuesday morning, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told the media that there have been a total of 15 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the state, including the three persons who had earlier recovered. Six new cases had been reported to be positive on Tuesday morning, all of whom had come in close contact with the family of three who returned from Italy in February.