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Washim district in Vidarbha got his first case of novel coronavirus, with a 60-year-old man testing positive for the virus Friday.
Washim Collector Hrishikesh Modak said, “a 60-year old person had been found to be coronavirus positive. We had information about his journey to Delhi, which he was denying. So, we had isolated him. He is asymptomatic but today his sample report has come positive.” “We have also quarantined all his family members too,” Modak added.
The patient, belonging to Medshi town of the district, said he had traveled to Badnera, where he had stayed in a mosque before returning to Washim, according to Modak.
Meanwhile, the district administration has also quarantined a person with travel history of Nizamuddin in Delhi. “But he wasn’t a participant of merkaz event. We have quarantined him as precaution,” Modak said.
In Vidarbha, Nagpur has a tally of 16 positive cases, followed by Buldana (5), Yavatmal (3) and Gondia (1). Four from Nagpur and three from Yavatmal have already been discharged. One person from Buldana had died last Saturday before testing positive.
Meanwhile, 15 samples of merkaz participants from Nagpur and one from Amravati tested negative for the virus on Friday. This was informed by Deputy Medical Superintendent of IGGMC Sagar Pande. “We have 500 more samples pending of the merkaz participants from various places,” Pande said.
Virus testing machine malfunctions
THE coronavirus testing machine at the Indira Gandhi Government Medical College (IGGMC) here went into malfunction on Friday. This was serving as the only machine for entire Vidarbha and also districts in the neighboring states like Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
“It had been continuously running since past about a month. Today it developed some software snag. It used to test about 100 samples every day. Now, we are testing on the second machine which we use for confirmatory test but it can test about 60 samples a day. This, however, hasn’t hampered testing much since a much bigger capacity (270 samples a day) machine is functioning from tonight at AIIMS, Nagpur. So, there is no problem now, ” Pande said