Maha: Thane doctor tests positive for COVID-19

A 48-year-old doctor from Thane is one of the 81 persons who tested positive for coronavirus in Maharashtra on Thursday, a senior civic official said. The doctor, who has a clinic in the city, does not have any history of foreign travel and is undergoing treatment at Thane Civil Hospital, Sandeep Malavi, deputy commissioner of Thane Municipal Corporation said.

The doctor had shut his clinic since March 20 and he may have attended to patients with coronavirus symptoms before that, he said, adding that the TMC is tracking down patients he had treated before falling ill and other high-risk contacts. In another development, Malavi said 25 attendees of Tablighi Jamaat event in Nizamuddin, who were traced to a mosque in Mumbra town, had tested negative for coronavirus.

The 25 people, including 13 Bangladeshis, eight Malaysians and four from Assam, had attended Tablighi Jamaat congregation at Nizamuddin in Delhi last month. The count of positive patients in Maharashtra's Thane district has risen to 13, while 2,212 suspected patients, including 989 travellers were screened, of which 2,069 are home quarantined and 82 under institutional quarantine.

Meanwhile, Thane mayor Naresh Mhaske expressed serious concern over the increase in the number of positive cases and directed the TMC's medical team to track down acquaintances and high-risk contacts of positive patients to contain the spread. In a related development, municipal commissioner Vijay Singhal ordered the zonal divisional municipal commissioners to take action against hospitals and clinics who fail to intimate authorities about suspected COVID-19patients and their contacts.

Errant hospitals and clinics will be charged under the Epidemic Act and the Disaster Management Act if they fail to alert the civic body about suspected cases, he said..

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)