Telangana Health Minister Etela Rajender on Thursday informed reporters that samples of both suspected cases of coronavirus from the state have tested negative after they were sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune.
This included the sample of a techie working in Hyderabad's Raheja Mindspace tech park and the sample of an Apollo hospital staff member who came in contact with the first positive case in Telangana when he had availed treatment there last month.
"The people of Telangana are very fortunate and lucky," Rajender told reporters, stating that everyone can breathe a sigh of relief.
The confirmation came after around 23 colleagues of the woman software engineer, suspected to be Covid-19 positive, were advised home isolation for two weeks.
The woman techie, who recently returned from Italy, had tested positive when a test was conducted at Hyderabad's Gandhi Hospital. However, when doctors sent the sample to Pune for cross verification, it came back negative.
(The Test report is negative for the Raheja Mindspace tech park IT employee)
The techie was working in a firm on the 9th Floor of Building Number 20 in Mindspace, which was evacuated on Wednesday for sanitation, triggering off mild panic in the tech park. Hundreds of techies began exiting the park within a span of a few hours, even as authorities appealed for calm.
Most of the companies resumed functioning normally from their premises on Thursday.
Rajender said that the condition of the first techie, who had tested positive, was stable and had improved.
(The Test report is negative for the Apollo Hospital sanitation employee)
The man, hailing from Hyderabad and working for a Bengaluru-based IT firm, is suspected to have been infected with the virus in Dubai, where he came in contact with a team member from Hong Kong.
After returning from Dubai, he spent two days in Bengaluru before taking a bus to Hyderabad. He later approached a private hospital with fever and flu-like symptoms. When his fever did not decrease, they referred him to Gandhi Hospital, where he tested positive for coronavirus.
Meanwhile, the Telangana government on Wednesday said a command centre had been set up in Koti, under the chairmanship of Health Minister Etela Rajender, to monitor the spread of the disease.
A budget of Rs 100 crore has already been set aside and the state government has said that it has 3,000 beds ready at a moment's notice. Appealing people not to panic, it said that the machinery was prepared to handle any situation that may arise.
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IANS inputs