Coronavirus: Italy-Returned Man Tests Positive In Punjab, Taking Cases In India To 45

A Hoshiarpur resident, who returned from Italy last week, has been tested positive for coronavirus afflictions, becoming the first such case in Punjab, an official said in Chandigarh on Monday. “The man who returned to Amritsar by an Air India flight from Milan in Italy has tested positive for coronavirus. He had landed at Amritsar International Airport via Delhi on March 4 along with his two other family members,” Punjab Principal Secretary (Health) Anurag Aggarwal said.

The patient is a resident of Hoshiarpur, he said, adding he was tracked at the Amritsar airport and got admitted to a government hospital in Amritsar. After he was found corona positive last week after preliminary investigation, his samples were sent to National Institute of Virology, Pune, which confirmed on Monday that the man is suffering from, coronavirus afflictions. His condition is "stable", the principal health secretary said.

Earlier in the day,  a three-year-old child in Kerala who returned from Italy with its parents over the weekend was among India's four new coronavirus patients, Health Ministry officials said. Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu reported one case each, officials said.

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One case was reported positive for coronavirus by state officials in Karnataka, but there was no immediate confirmation from the Union Health Ministry. The ministry in a statement also clarified that the patient from Murshidabad, West Bengal, who died on Sunday had tested negative for the infection and "hence so far no death has been reported due to the disease in the country".

As the COVID-19 scare spread -- with 110,041 people from more than 90 countries infected and 3,825 people killed -- India said it will send a military transport aircraft to Iran on Monday night to bring back Indians stranded in the nation, official sources said.

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About 2,000 Indians are living in Iran, where 7,000 people have tested positive for the contagious disease with flu-like symptoms and 237 people killed. Giving details of the new cases reported in India, officials said the patient in Jammu, the first case in Jammu and Kashmir, is learnt to have a travel history to Iran while the patient from Uttar Pradesh had come in contact with the six people from Agra who had tested positive. 

The Delhi patient has no travel history and had come in contact with a positive patient from the city, Delhi Health Department officials added. Earlier, some officials said the patient had travelled to Italy.

(With PTI inputs)