22 Days after Mysuru Firm's Employee Became Covid-19 Patient, 10 Secondary Contacts Test Positive

Bengaluru: Mysuru in Karnataka reported 12 new coronavirus cases as of Friday taking the total number of cases in the hotspot district to 73.

Of the new cases, 10 are contacts of an employee (P52) of Jubilant Generics Limited, a pharmaceutical company's unit based at Nanjangud in the Mysure. Samples of the 10 people tested positive 22 days after P-52 was confirmed as a COVID-19 patient.

"These are all secondary contacts. They were under home quarantine since March 27 (P52’s samples tested positive on March 26). Why they tested positive is something experts have to say," said Mysore Deputy Commissioner Abiram G Shankar.

"Quarantining only ensures that they don't spread the virus in case they have it. In Nanjangud, P52 was active till we found out that he was positive. By that time, he could have infected many people. Mostly those people are testing positive for the virus now," he added.

P52 was the first patient in the Nanjangud cluster and had no travel or known contact history. Since then, 59 people have tested positive in this cluster, including employees and their contacts. With this, Mysore district got the highest number of active cases in Karnataka.

Raw materials in the company, imported from China were suspected to be the source of the virus and samples of the same, including container swabs, were sent for testing to National Institute of Virology, Pune. The results of the samples came negative.

The government has, however, said that there were foreigners at the company's plant in Nanjangud, including those from China, Japan, Germany and the US, between February 4 and 18 and contacts with them could be the source of the virus but this is yet to be ascertained.