Coronavirus / 5 coronavirus suspects escape from Nagpur hospital's isolation ward, all traced

Nagpur: Five people suspected of being infected with coronavirus escaped from a hospital in Nagpur city of Maharashtra and were traced later by the police, news agency ANI reported on Saturday.

The five people had escaped from the isolation ward of Mayo General Hospital in the city.

“One of them had tested negative, reports of four others were awaited. We have traced them and they will be brought back to the hospital by the administration,” S Suryavanshi, the sub-inspector of Nagpur police station, was quoted as saying by ANI.

The city had reported its first positive case of coronavirus on Wednesday after the IT professional, who had come from the United States on March 6 and got himself admitted at Mayo General Hospital. There are 16 suspected cases of coronavirus in the city.

Five more people — two in Nagpur and one each in Mumbai and Pune and Ahmednagar — tested positive for coronavirus on Friday, taking the number of infected in the state to 18.

The Maharashtra government has ordered a shutdown of cinema theatres, auditoriums, gymnasiums and swimming pools in Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Nagpur from Friday midnight till March 30 in view of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak.

The government has invoked provisions of the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, to enable its administration to enforce decisions aimed at preventing or containing the outbreak.

Uddhav Thackeray said that since the majority of the state’s cases are from Pune at 10, the government has decided to shut down all schools in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad until the next order. This will not be applicable for students of Class 10 and 12 as their board examinations are being conducted.

“The decision to shut down schools in other areas of the state will be taken as and when required,” the chief minister said.

Thackeray said the state government will ask all the organisers and event management firms to cancel all religious, cultural, commercial and sports events.

He also declared that there would be no compulsory quarantine of people coming from seven countries — China, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Spain, France and Germany — which was declared on Thursday.

Two people have died of coronavirus in India so far as the country reported 83 positive cases on Saturday.