As the three patients admitted in Hyderabad’s Fever Hospital on Tuesday continue to have symptoms of coronavirus, their test samples were sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, three members from a family, returning from China, were screened at the Hyderabad airport, and sent to Fever Hospital, as they had symptoms of the virus.
The three patients are kept under observation in the isolation ward. However, as they still have symptoms — cough and runny nose — their test samples were taken and sent to NIV.
Dr Shankar, the superintendent of Fever Hospital, told TNM that they are likely to get the results on Thursday.
As the influx of the patients suspected to be infected with coronavirus is low, doctors continue to send the test samples to NIV.
However, Telangana Health Minister Etala Rajender, on Wednesday, requested the Centre to provide kits to the state government, to conduct necessary tests to detect the disease in Hyderabad itself.
In another development, on Wednesday, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a fresh travel advisory against visiting China, in the backdrop of outbreak of novel coronavirus in Wuhan province of China.
The Indian ministry also informed that the list of airports for screening passengers for symptoms of nCoV has been increased to 21. This includes the airports of Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Cochin, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Kolkata, Coimbatore, Guwahati, Gaya, Bagdogra, Jaipur, Lucknow, Chennai, Trivandrum, Trichy, Varanasi, Vizag, Bhubaneswar and Goa.
The novel coronavirus is a new strain of the virus that spread from Wuhan province of China and brought the city to lockdown. The Indian government is also on high alert and is taking all preventive measures to stop the virus from entering the country as many people travel to India from China and visa-versa on a daily basis. The ministry has also deployed health teams in districts bordering Nepal and Bangladesh in the wake of confirmed cases of the virus in neighbourhood Nepal.
Chinese health authorities on Wednesday said the death toll in the viral outbreak has increased to 132, with 5,974 confirmed cases in 31 provincial-level regions.
India stands at 23rd among the top 30 countries that are at high risk from the spread of the 2019 coronavirus (2019-nCoV) that the researchers have identified. The most 'at risk' countries or regions worldwide are Thailand, Japan and Hong Kong. The US is placed 6th on the list, with Australia 10th and the UK 17th, the study said.
(With IANS inputs)