Separate ward to be built for coronavirus patients in Gorakhpur dist hospital; no case detected yet

With the deadly novel coronavirus spreading rapidly outside China, including Nepal, the Gorakhpur administration has decided to build a separate ward in the district hospital for people infected with the virus, a senior health department official said on Saturday.

"Till date no case of coronavirus has been found in Gorakhpur. However, the department is ready and soon an isolation ward will be constructed in the district hospital," Chief Medical Officer Srikant Tiwari said.

Eleven people, who returned to India from China in recent days, have been put under observation in Kerala, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad for possible exposure to the virus. The symptoms for the virus include fever, cough and respiratory distress.

"The virus is deadly and it has already taken lives and has spread to many countries. Recently, a case was detected in Nepal too. We share a 1,751-km-long open border with Nepal and without checking the borders, the efforts of checking the virus at airports will go in vein," Dr RN Singh, who extensively worked on encephalitis during its outbreak in the district, told reporters.

"Health checkposts on Indo-Nepal border needs to be established to check the entry of virus into the country," the Gorakhpur-based doctor said.

On Friday, Nepal confirmed the first case of the coronavirus (nCoV), identifying the infected person as a Nepali student who recently returned from the Chinese city of Wuhan.

"In 2002-03, during SARS epidemic, we demanded health checkposts be at opened at borders at Sanauli-Bhairawa (India-Nepal) border, and it was accepted by the government. Cases of coronavirus have been detected in Thailand and many people from here go to Thailand and many come here from there, so health checkposts are essentially required," Singh added.