Kerala minister: India’s first coronavirus patient responding well to treatment

The condition of India’s first coronavirus-affected
woman in Kerala’s Thrissur is stable and the state health ministry has
constituted a medical board to review her case, health minister KK Shailaja
said early on Friday.

The minister had rushed to Thrissur after the Union
health ministry confirmed the woman, who returned from a medical university in
Wuhan last week, had tested positive for the virus.

Shailaja said, “The condition of the student is
stable. She is responding well to symptomatic treatment. We have constituted a
medical board and bulletin will be issued every evening.”

“We want all to co-operate with the government
agencies and not to spread any rumours,” she said.

She has also sought the help of private hospitals and
doctors to tide over the crisis.

There was a plan to shift her to the Thrissur Medical
College Hospital but authorities decided against it for now after a high-level
meeting.

The minister said there 1056 people under observation
in Kerala and 15 are in isolation wards. Many people who came in direct contact
with the first patient have been put under observation that is why the number
of those under observation increased steadily.

Some reports suggest the woman was first screened and
found negative and allowed to go home but she was later rushed to the hospital
after she complained breathlessness and throat pain.

A complete block in the medical college hospital has
been converted as the isolation ward. The Union health ministry has also agreed
to start a virus- testing centre in Alapuzha.

The government has also sought the advice of the
virology experts from Manipal Medical College in Mangaluru and Baby Memorial
Hospital in Kozhikode, which worked during the nipah outbreak in Kozhikode two
years ago.

The state health ministry has asked suspected patients
to go by the protocol of the World Health Organization (WHO) and not to take
homoeopathy or unani medicine.

The virus, which has killed 213 people, all in China,
is said to have originated from a seafood market in Wuhan.

WHO on Friday declared the ongoing novel coronavirus
outbreak that originated in China but has spread to at least 17 countries as an
international public health emergency (PHEIC).

The coronavirus is a large family of viruses that
causes illnesses ranging from the common cold to acute respiratory syndromes,
but the virus that has killed people in China is a new strain.