Vikramaditya
Port Blair, Apr 19: Pressure is mounting on contact tracing team of Administration and the COVID19 team of Health Department as the source of infection of Case Number 12 could not be established yet, on the basis of COVID19 test.
A senior officer of Health Department told Andaman Sheekha that logically it is believed that the source of infection is the brother of Case Number 12, who came to Port Blair from Mainland on 21 March 2020 and who also had some symptoms but it could not be established via COVID19 test as the test result has come negative.
Experts believe that as since 21 March it is almost 29 days, and that is why even if the brother of Case Number 12 was a COVID19 positive case at that point of time, he will test negative now.
The senior officer said that Antibody test might establish the link but that Antibody test kit is not available in Andaman. “It will be reaching Andaman soon. The kit is on the way,” he said.
He said that till now 175 people connected to the case number 12,13,14 and 15 have been sent to institutional quarantine and more names are coming forward every day.
Regarding Rapid Testing Kits, which are very useful to get a general idea of spread of infection, are also about to reach Andaman in coming days.
Meanwhile talking to Andaman Sheekha the Director of Health Services Dr. Omkar Singh also accepted that the test result of the brother of the case number 12 has come negative.
The DHS said that today many samples of the quarantined people connected to case number 12,13,14 and 15 have been sent and results are awaited.
Regarding rapid testing kits, the DHS said that Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been given slot of 24 April 2020, when, these Kits will be sent for Andaman.
He said that presently DHS has six ventilators ready for severe COVID19 patients and more 14 are about to come.
“May be, we will not require the 14 additional ventilators as one must understand that machine does not treat patients. Men behind the Machine are equally important. Unfortunately we have crisis of Anesthetist, we have only four Anesthetists at present. It won’t benefit if we get too many machines and not change enough man-power. We want to treat patient in stage-two itself, so that the patient do not reach to the stage where ventilators are necessary,” Dr. Omkar Singh said.
