Ward boy of private hospital in Patna tests positive for

A 20-year-old man, who worked as a ward boy at a private hospital where he came into contact with a COVID-19 patient, has tested positive, taking the total number of such cases reported from Bihar to seven, the health department said on Friday.

According to a health department official, a 38-year- old man from Munger district who died at AIIMS, Patna, last week before his test results confirmed that he was suffering from COVID-19, was first admitted to the private hospital situated in Khemnichak locality of the city which has since been sealed.

The district administration ordered all doctors, nurses and other staff of the facility to be quarantined.

Samples of 13 people working at the private hospital were sent for testing and the result of one that of the ward boy hailing from Jaganpura area in the city was found positive.

Efforts were on to trace the other staff of the private hospital who would be quarantined as a precautionary measure and their samples will be sent for testing, the official said.

Notably, Bihar had reported zero coronavirus positive cases until Sunday when the deceased patient from Munger who had returned from Qatar where he worked as a welder and a woman resident of the city who is admitted to AIIMS, Patna, tested positive.

There has been a spike in the number of cases since then with seven persons testing positive in less than a week. On Thursday, two persons a woman in her 40s and a 12-year- old boy who lived in a house adjacent to that of the deceased patient in Munger had tested positive.

They have been sent to a hospital in Bhagalpur for treatment. Samples of more than 50 people living in the vicinity, however, tested negative.

Besides, two men in their 20s, both residents of different localities of Patna, one having returned from Scotland and the other from Gujarat, have tested positive and are undergoing treatment at NMCH.

Till Thursday, 469 samples from across the state had been sent for testing out of which 415 reported negative and three were rejected. Reports of the remaining were awaited.

In the state capital, about 2000 people who returned from abroad or other parts of the country before the nationwide lockdown came into force have been put in home quarantine as a precautionary measure.