Kerala on Monday declared Novel Coronavirus outbreak “state calamity”. A third case of the virus was confirmed in the state yesterday. On Sunday, the second case had been confirmed by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The first positive case was found on January 30.
All three cases of confirmed Novel Coronavirus are from Kerala. In many other states, including in West Bengal, several individuals who were either travelling with them or who have recently returned from China, have been kept under observation in isolation wards.
Four people have been admitted in the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Kolkata’s Beliaghata to be kept under observation.
There have been 425 deaths in China from Novel Coronavirus so far and over 17,000 have been affected.
The Kerala government took the decision to declare a “state calamity” after the State Disaster Managament Authority held a meeting with the state chief secretary in Thiruvananthapuram. The state health minister KK Shailaja said that it was not to scare people but to be cautious and take adequate preventive steps to not spread it further.
In Kerala alone, over 2,000 persons from China and other countries have been kept in isolation under observation. Most of them are in isolation at home, with 84 people in hospital’s isolation wards.
All international airports in India have been directed by the Civil Aviation Ministry to screen flyers who are arriving from China to check the spread of Corona virus.
Airport authorities have been asking arriving passengers from China if they have symptoms of common cold and fever or have visited the Wuhan City in China – where the disease first broke out – in the past three weeks. Such passengers are being asked to fill up a form making these declarations
Coronavirus (CoV) is a large family of viruses which cause illnesses ranging from common cold to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The suspects in coronavirus infection need to be kept under observation for at least 14 days as the symptoms of this virus are expressed late, experts say. In early stages, this virus is hard to detect as the early signs of this infection are quite similar to those from common viruses. The symptoms may include diarrhoea with fever, cough and common cold.
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