Four more persons with symptomatic fever akin to COVID-19 have been admitted to the isolation ward at two hospitals, taking the total number of people quarantined at hospitals in the district to 15 on Saturday.
According to District Collector P.B. Noohu, two of them are primary contacts of the infected persons who came from Italy, one person who came from America, and another one came from Pune in Maharashtra.
Newly isolated
Three of the newly isolated persons have been admitted to the Pathanamthitta General Hospital and the fourth one at the District Hospital in the Kozhencherry.
Throat swab and blood samples of all the four have been sent to the Virology Institute in Alappuzha for clinical examination.
A total of 4,431 persons have reached their homes in the district from various affected countries as on Saturday. All those who do not have any disease symptoms have been placed under quarantine at their homes for 14 days as part of the ongoing intensive disease prevention drive.
Another 811 primary and secondary contacts of the five infected persons admitted to the Pathanamthitta General Hospital have already been quarantined at their homes, taking the total number of people quarantined in the district to 5,242.
Violations
The District Collector said legal proceedings, invoking provisions in the Public Health Act and Disaster Management Act, would be initiated against those who were found violating the home quarantine norms and straying out of their homes, posing high risk to the general public outside.
The call centre set up at the collectorate received six calls from the public to pass on the information regarding straying out of certain quarantined people from their homes, the Collector said.
No positive case
However, a medical bulletin released by the Health Department in the evening said no new COVID-19 case had been reported from the district on Saturday too.
The Health surveillance teams have screened a total of 6,185 passengers at the Thiruvalla railway station and various bus stations in the district on Saturday.
However, no person among them was found to be having any symptomatic fever, District Medical Officer A.L. Sheeja has said.
Meanwhile, Deputy Commissioner of Travancore Devaswom Board V. Krishnakumar Warrier has directed the administrative officers and assistant devaswom commissioners in the district to take every possible step at various temples attached to the board to check COVID-19 spreading to more people.
