India’s First Covid-19 Patient Tests Positive For Coronavirus Again

FILE PHOTO: A healthcare worker collects a swab sample from a woman, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease in New Delhi

A woman medico, who was India’s first COVID-19 patient, has tested positive again for the virus, health authorities said in Kerala’s Thrissur today.

“She is reinfected with COVID-19. Her RT-PCR is positive, antigen is negative. She is asymptomatic,” Thrissur District Medical Officer Dr KJ Reena told news agency Press Trust of India.

“Her samples were tested as she was prepared to go to New Delhi for study purposes. Then the RT-PCR result turned out to be positive,” she told Press Trust of India.

The woman is currently at home and “she is OK,” the doctor told PTI.

It was on January 30, 2020, that the third year medical student from Wuhan University tested positive for COVID-19, becoming India’s first COVID-19 patient, days after she had returned home following semester holidays.

After nearly three weeks of treatment at the Thrissur Medical College Hospital, she had tested negative twice for the virus, confirming her recovery, and was discharged on February 20, 2020.

Meanwhile, giving rise to fresh worries about the COVID-19 pandemic rearing its head again, the R-value for the coronavirus, which denotes the speed at which the infection is spreading, has gone up for the country, revealed researchers at the Chennai-based Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc).

The mathematical representation that acts as an indicator for how fast the infection is spreading shows it has gone from 0.78 on June 30 to 0.88 in the first week of July.

This is despite the nationwide tally of new cases remaining low and comes amid the unlocking process begun by many states trying to restore a semblance of normalcy as the deadly second wave, which infected lakhs and killed thousands during its peak in April-May, shows signs of ebbing.