Till a week ago, the coronavirus cases reported in the Kannur district of Kerala had been of people who came from foreign countries. But on April 5, the first cases of people contracting the COVID-19 through contact were reported, wrote Kannur Collector TV Subhash on Facebook.
This has happened due to the lack of caution of a family that returned from a Gulf country, Subhash writes. “The first contact case was of an 81-year-old man in Cheruvanchery. Five days later, the number of contact cases rose to 10. What is most sad is that except for one person, all the others got it from virus-infected family members. All eight people living in one home have been infected, through their interaction with a child who had come from Gulf. Even before the child started showing symptoms, the 81 year old in his house got infected.”
Subhash then introspects on where 'we have gone wrong'. He comes to the conclusion that grownups in the house had failed to keep the child properly in home quarantine. "Relatives in Kerala, seeing the child after a long time, would have wanted to express their affection. It is on March 11 that the 11-year-old child came from Sharjah with his 13-year-old brother and mother. The mother's two brothers picked them up in a car. Health workers had given clear instructions at the airport as well as at home to strictly follow the quarantine. However, perhaps because there were no symptoms of the disease, everyone including the children had stepped out of the house."
Subhash notes that the family has ignored the warnings that it may take several days for an infected person to show symptoms.
"What's now important is that whoever has come in contact with the family should immediately report to health workers. The more they delay, the more are the chances of the disease spreading," the Collector adds.
He requests the people in quarantine to follow the instructions of the authorities. "Or all the efforts during the lockdown - of tens of thousands staying locked in their houses, the work of district administration, health workers and police toiling day and night - would all go to waste."