Pune institute tells Kolkata ID Hospital that admitted Chinese national not Coronavirus-affected

A Chinese national admitted to the Beliaghata ID Hospital in Kolkata has not been afflicted with Coronavirus, senior officials of the state health department said.

Earlier on Monday, a Chinese woman was admitted to the Beliaghata Infectious Diseases Hospital from a private hospital in Kolkata as a suspected case of Coronavirus. A number of samples were to be sent to the Pune Institute of Virology for confirmation. However, the preliminary reports have now confirmed that it is not a case of Coronavirus, superintendent of the Beliaghata ID Hospital, Ashis Manna said.

The 28-year-old woman from China has some ailments in the stomach and treatment is on. She had travelled to various parts of India and landed in Kolkata on January 24. With headache and several other symptoms, she was admitted to a private hospital off the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass and taken to the ID Hospital at Beliaghata on Sunday evening as the authorities did not want to take any risk.

Eventually, after series of tests and discussions with doctors at the Pune Institute, doctors have now confirmed that she is not affected by Coronavirus.

Health department officials today held a series of meetings and said that there was no need to panic and the admission to the hospital had been made merely on the basis of of suspected attack. Officials said that all necessary measures for treatment are available at Beliaghata ID Hospital.

An isolation ward has been created to treat the patients with Coronavirus symptoms at the Beliaghata ID Hospital. The health department authorities have said that they are fully equipped to treat cases with this infection.
Four persons in Mumbai have been kept in isolation wards, nine in Kerala. The virus has killed 26 persons and 1,120 persons have been affected. China has currently locked down ten cities. With Nepal confirming one case of confirmed Coronavirus, a special alert has been sounded in north Bengal and north Bihar.

All the major 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. The international airports of Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Cochin, Delhi and Mumbai were among the first to be alerted.

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 two 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).
With the Chinese New Year being celebrated, Chinese citizens and those living in China are travelling more internationally now, and has thus increased the risk of the spread of the disease.