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Bengaluru Coronavirus Patient’s Wife Did Not ‘Flee’ As Reported In Media: Karnataka Govt

byAkanksha Agarwal
14th March 2020
3 minute read
Update
This story turned out to be misleading. Numerous media outlets including Storypick were misled. We regret and apologise for the inaccuracy.

Updated facts:
1. Google has confirmed that the husband tested positive on March 12th and not March 7th, as reported earlier.

2. Dr Sudhakar, the Minister of Medical Education clarified that the couple had gone on their honeymoon to Switzerland and Greece (not Italy).

3. “From Mumbai, they reached Bengaluru on March 8 at around 9.45 pm. She left from the airport at 1.30 am on March 9 to Delhi. From Delhi she traveled to Agra”, stated Sudhakar.

4. A friend of the couple has claimed that the women was quarantined in a hospital that supposedly was unhygienic and hence the family asked for permission to leave. The authorities granted permission but the next day she was taken back to the quarantine.

The novel coronavirus has caused 2 fatalities in India. A 76-year-old man who returned from Saudi Arabia died in Kalburgi, Karnataka, and yesterday a 68-year-old woman from Delhi lost her life to COVID-19, reports Business Standard. With 82 confirmed cases of infection, governments in many states have shut down schools, colleges, cinema halls, and malls till March 31. The IPL has been postponed and mass gatherings have been dissuaded.

At a time when everyone is being cautious, working remotely and avoiding public places, a 25-year-old woman left her Bengaluru hospital isolation ward against her doctors’ advice and went to stay with her parents in Agra, reports Deccan Herald.

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The Times of India quoted a health official from S N Medical College (where she is now admitted after testing positive for the disease) saying,

“The woman got married to the Bengaluru-based Google employee in early February. The couple left for their honeymoon soon afterwards to Italy and later travelled to Greece and France. They landed at Mumbai airport on February 27 and flew back to Bengaluru. However, on March 7, her husband tested positive for Covid-19 and they were both quarantined in Bengaluru. Later, the woman informed her parents about her situation and allegedly at his request, she returned to Agra on March 8.”

Agra chief medical officer Dr. Mukesh Kumar Vats added,

“After the medical team reached the house of the woman’s parents, her father, a railway engineer, refused to cooperate with us and lied that his daughter had left for Bengaluru. But after the district magistrate’s intervention, we were able to gain access to their house and took all the nine family members to the district hospital for screening.”

Since she took a flight from Bengaluru to New Delhi and subsequently a train to Agra, she most likely exposed her fellow passengers to the virus.

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Ajit Singh, Chief public relations officer of North Central Railway zone said,

“The entire Agra Cantt railway station, trains and railway premises are being sanitized. We also are coordinating with the state authorities to contain the spread of the virus and have set up an isolation ward at the railway hospital. We have alerted our employees to follow proper precautionary measures to avoid getting Covid-19.”

The only way we can successfully battle this pandemic is if all of us are more careful and responsible. If someone close to us is infected, we should isolate ourselves so as to not risk spreading it to others.

Cover Image Source – left, right

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