66-year-old is 10th Covid-19 case in Kolkata, has no travel history

KOLKATA: A 66-year-old man has tested positive for Covid-19 taking the total count of infected in the state to 10. According to the patient’s family, he has no travel history — either abroad or outside Bengal — and did not come in contact with any Covid-19 patient, setting alarm bells ringing in medical circles.
The former Coal India employee, who lives in Nayabad, is undergoing treatment in the ICU of a private hospital off EM Bypass and his condition is critical.He was put on ventilation support on Thursday evening. Doctors have also put him on anti-retroviral drugs used in the treatment for HIV. This is the first time that this drug is being used on a Covid-19 patient in the state.

“The patient’s condition is stable but critical. His oxygen saturation is low and he is on ventilation support. We are trying hard to salvage him,” said Dr Sudipta Mitra, of Peerless Hospital, where the patient is admitted.
The patient was brought to the hospital on March 23 with complaint of fever and respiratory distress and admitted in the isolation ward. His swab samples were first sent to IPGMER and then to ICMR-NICED for confirmatory test. Both results turned out to be positive.

Family members said the senior citizen had attended a family wedding in Midnapore’s Egra on March 13. “There were none among the guest who had travelled to the affected parts of the world or anyone who had returned from another state,” the patient’s son claimed.
The patient’s wife, son, daughter-in-law and four year-old grand-daughter has been taken to the New Town quara-ntine Centre and their swab samples are being tested. The East Midnapore district administration is in touch with his relatives in Egra, who have also been put under home isolation. “All of them are stable and did not display any symptoms. They have been advised strict home isolation. A police picket along with a medical team has been stationed there. We are also reaching out to all guests at the wedding and advising them home isolation. Periodic reports are being sent to the state control room,” a senior officer said. The patient reached Egra on March 12 to attend the wedding of his nephew. More than 300 guests attended the wedding the next day. He started feeling feverish from March 14. When the fever did not subside even after medication, his blood samples were tested in Egra itself.
“The reports came positive for typhoid. In addition to the fever, my father started suffering from sore throat, cough and breathing distress. That is why we brought him to the Kolkata hospital straight from Egra,” said the son, an engineer by profession. He said they travelled in their personal car and drove straight to the hospital where the patient is admitted.
“Thank God we brought him straight to this hospital where doctors started treating him in the isolation ward from day one. Had we admitted him in a local hospital in Midnapore, the ramification in terms the transmission of infection would have been greater,” said the son. “I have signed the consent form allowing doctors to use anti-etroviral drugs. I am optimist of a positive outcome,” he added.
Doctors at Sawai Man Singh Hospital in Jaipur were the first to start using a combination of Lopanavir and Ritonavir on some Covid-19 patients, including an Italian. On Thursday, a government hospital in Kochi, too, declared a British national free of the virus after the patient was put on the anti-HIV drug.
“In HIV positive patients, this combination drug inhibits the growth of virus along with bringing down its virulence. Though a wider trial on its efficacy on Covid-19 patients should have been ideal, the situation is not ideal for such trial due to the current scenario,” said a clinical pharmacologist.
The hospital medical team involved in the treatment of the patient have also been put on hydroxyl-chloroquine that has recommended by ICMR as a preventive medication for high-risk contacts of a positive patient.
“Our medical team dealing with the patient have been given full personal protective equipment right from day one,” said Mitra.