3 More Swine Flu @ Coimbatore
Three more cases with flu-like symptoms reported to the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital on Thursday, but they were not admitted to the quarantine ward at the hospital. Instead, they exercised the option of quarantine at home in the city, after giving blood samples and nasopharyngeal swabs for tests. Resident Medical Officer P. Sivaprakasam said a 10-year-old girl from Saibaba Colony, a 17-year-old girl living in the same area but studying in a school in Udhagamandalam and a 22-year-old student of an engineering college in the city reported to the hospital with symptoms such as fever, cold, cough and sore throat.
They were, however, not willing to stay in the quarantine ward. As the Government itself had said that the option of house quarantine could be offered, the three were asked to do so by the hospital authorities. The 10-year-old girl and the engineering student, residing at Singanallur in the city, did not have a history of travel or known contact with any A (H1N1) positive case. The girl studying in Udhagamandalam, who belonged to Meghalaya, had recently travelled by a flight from New Delhi to Coimbatore.
With these persons, the hospital had seen four suspected cases in the last two days. A 24-year-old man was admitted to the quarantine ward on arrival here by a flight from Sharjah on Wednesday. The blood samples and swabs of all the four persons were sent to the King’s Institute at Guindy in Chennai on Thursday.
For the first time, samples were being sent to the institute in Chennai from here because the National Institute of Communicable Diseases in New Delhi had said that it was overloaded with samples from various parts of the country, the hospital official said. With the King’s Institute as an option for Tamil Nadu, the NICD suggested that the samples from Coimbatore could be sent to it.
