Three-year-old Kerala boy, J&K woman test COVID-19 positive

Kochi: A three-year-old boy from Kerala on Monday tested positive for coronavirus, taking the total number of COVID-19 positive cases in the state to six. The child, along with his parents, has reportedly recently travelled to Italy.

According to health officials, the family arrived at Cochin International airport on an Emirates EK 503 flight Saturday morning. After the child showed symptoms of the virus during the screening at the airport, he and his parents were quarantined.

A day earlier, five people from Pathanamthitta district had tested positive for COVID-19. The infection is suspected to be transmitted by three people, who have a travel history from Italy. The patients include a 54-year-old man, his 53-year-old wife and their 24-year-old son, who had passed on the infection to two of their relatives, a 65-year-old man and his 61-year-old wife. All the five people have been kept in the isolation ward.

Kerala’s health minister K. K Shailaja added that this family had managed to evade the screening at the airport. “People who are returning to Kerala from foreign countries should act responsibly and and get a medical check-up done soon after reaching India,” she said on Sunday.

With this case, the total number of corona-positive cases in the country has gone up to 43 following a woman from Jammu and Kashmir, who had returned from Iran, also testing positive.

While the country’s first three cases were reported from Kerala, all three students have since recovered. Around 962 hospitals/health facilities have been identified by States for treatment of COVID-19 cases.

The coronavirus epidemic, which began from China's Wuhan city in December, had spread to over 95 nations. More than 3,500 people are dead and 1,00,000 people have been infected.