Bengaluru's mystery of the pregnant woman solved
Health officials were unable to say how she tested positive if she had contact or any travel history
Bengaluru: This city’s frayed nerves eased a bit today with the mystery of the Covid-positive pregnant solved. For close on 24 hours, the city’s health officials had been racking their brains how a woman who had absolutely no travel history and absolutely no coronavirus contact had tested Covid positive.
Was this the sign that community transmission had begun in Bengaluru? Well, it turned out a false alarm, thankfully.
The women had tested positive because a private diagnostic lab had botched the test.
The pregnant went to a private hospital for a routine checkup and the hospital routinely took a throat swab of the woman and sent it to a private laboratory for a COVID-19 test.
The result came positive.
Baffled by the positive result, health officials hurried to test all her family members and also collected one more sample from her and sent it to a government laboratory.
This time, the result was negative. It was double-checked and it was found that she had no COVID-19.
That wasn’t the only snafu that had the health staff on tenterhooks in the past two days. A double entry made at the Jayanagar General Hospital created much confusion as well.
A policeman from the Beguru police station was asked to get tested at the hospital and it was declared positive. However, when the officials called the number given in the form, it went to a different person. On verification, it was revealed that hospital personnel had filled the same name and address in two forms, but with different phone numbers.
Now, the person who is really COVID-19 positive has been shifted to a designated hospital.
Meanwhile on Wednesday, fear gripped Yeshwanthpur, which has so far been COVID-19 free. A woman admitted to a private nursing home tested positive for the coronavirus.
The woman was admitted to the private nursing home three days ago for suspected chikangunya. On Wednesday evening, her COVID-19 test results came back positive.
Health officials immediately shifted all the patients to another hospital for quarantine and sanitised the nursing home.