Visakhapatnam has reported one more positive COVID-19 case on Friday taking the total count to 12 in the State. It is the second case of direct transmission from an infected person both in the State and in Visakhapatnam city where the highest number of cases were reported in the State.
The patient was a close contact of a 25-year-old male patient who returned from Birmingham in England to Visakhapatnam on March 17 via New Delhi by air, according to a Health Department bulletin.
He travelled to his home Thagaapuvalasa along with his father in a cab and started showing symptoms from March 19 after which he got admitted to chest hospital in the city on March 21.
Close contact
The youth’s close contact who is now the 12th patient has also been admitted to the hospital on March 21 with mild symptoms and was placed under isolation since then. Tests of his samples turned positive on Friday.
Earlier, a woman contracted the infection from her husband who came back to Visakhapatnam from abroad. There are 11 active cases in the State at present, four in Visakhapatnam, and three in Vijayawada.
New contact tracing guidelines
Meanwhile, District Collectors were asked to follow the new contact tracing guidelines for effective tracing. The government has arranged 23,479 beds across the district in quarantine facilities and arrangements have been made for the supply of 5.45 lakh N-95 masks and 1.3 lakh personal protection equipment kits (PPE).
Further, as of Friday morning, the government has identified 28,028 foreign returnees and put 27,929 under home isolation, and 99 symptomatic persons are under observation at hospitals. Test results of 55 samples are awaited. So far 384 samples were collected and 317 of them tested negative to COVID-19.
