The Hindu : Two more test positive for SARS

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 29, 2003

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Two more test positive for SARS

By P. Sunderrajan

NEW DELHI April 28. The Centre today announced that two more persons had tested positive for the dreaded Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. With this, the total number of confirmed cases in the country has gone up to nine.

The Centre also announced that four more laboratories were being roped in for testing samples for the disease. They are: the TB Research Centre, Chennai, the Enterovirus Research Centre, Mumbai, the National Institute of Cholera and Other Enteric Diseases, Kolkata and the National AIDS Research Institute, Pune.

Briefing reporters, the Director-General of Health Services in the Union Health Ministry, S.P. Agarwal, said these laboratories would be operational in 10 days. They had equipment such as genetic sequencing tools and adequate expertise for the job. Only the personnel needed to be trained in the specific aspects of testing for SARS.

As of now only the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, New Delhi, and the National Institute of Virology, Pune, are testing the samples. The two institutions, being overburdened, have so far received samples from 46 suspected cases and reports are awaited for nine cases — six from the NICD and three from the NIV.

Of the two new positive cases announced today, one is a 32-year-old Mumbai driver. He purportedly contracted the disease after coming in contact with the family of Julie D'Silva, the girl who got married at Pune even after testing positive for SARS. The man had taken the family from Mumbai to Pune in his car and is suspected to have got the disease in the process. Apart from the bride, three members of her family — brother, mother and uncle — are already down with the disease and two more, her father and her brother-in-law, are under observation.

The other new positive case is a Radheshyam Gupta (36) of Kolkata. He has been under treatment for fever at the Infectious Diseases Hospital in the city since arriving from Bangkok on April 19.

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