Five persons cured of COVID-19 were discharged from the isolation ward of the Pathanamthitta General Hospital on Monday afternoon.
According to Ashish Mohankumar, Resident Medical Officer, the condition of all five, three of whom had come to their home village of Aythala in Ranni from the pandemic-hit Italy on February 29, and their two relatives in the neighbourhood, is good. The medical board declared them fit for being discharged from the hospital on Monday, bringing an end to their quarantine on the 25th day.
Dr. Mohankumar told The Hindu that all the five had been advised to remain in home quarantine for the next 14 days as the medical fraternity was not definite on the chances of a reinfection or side effects of the virus.
Asymptomatic carrier
The trio who returned from Italy were all praise for the medical team and the care they received at the government hospital. Dr. Mohankumar said the 26-year-old son of the couple from Italy was an asymptomatic carrier and no serious health issue had manifested in him all these days.
However, his father and uncle had Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and their recovery owed much to the perseverance, expertise and dedication of the medical team, he said.
Aythala became the epicentre of the second spell of COVID-19 pandemic in the State with the five persons testing positive for the viral infection on March 7. A day before, the Health Department and the district administration had quarantined them at the isolation ward of the General Hospital. Within 24 hours of them testing positive, the authorities identified and home quarantined their 350 primary contacts and 850 secondary contacts. “That a government hospital in a mofussil region like Pathanamthitta could achieve this, is undoubtedly great,” commented Thomas P. Thomas, environmentalist and academic.
Crowded send-off
However, Mr. Thomas said the hospital authorities should have avoided the crowded send-off given to the discharged patients, attended by nearly 100 persons, in violation of the social distancing guideline, as it would only create a wrong precedent.
No new cases
Meanwhile, in a medical bulletin released here on Monday, District Collector P.B. Noohu said no new COVID-19 cases were reported in Pathanamthitta district for the fifth consecutive day on Monday.
Twelve persons have been admitted in the isolation wards at various hospitals in the district. Of this, five have been quarantined at the Pathanamthitta General Hospital, four at the District Hospital in Kozhencherry, and three others at the Pushpagiri Medical College Hospital in Thiruvalla.
Ninety-two persons quarantined at various hospitals in the district have been discharged.
He said one of the 4,224 persons screened for symptomatic fever, using infrared digital thermometers, at various border points of the district was placed under home quarantine on Monday.
