COVID-free Manipur detects fresh COVID-19 case after 26 days

Imphal: A fresh COVID-19 positive case was detected in Manipur on Thursday, 26-days after the northeastern State was declared COVID-19-free, officials said.

A Manipur Health and Family Welfare Department official said that a 31-years-old youth from Imphal East district, who recently returned from Mumbai with his cancer patient father, has tested positive on Thursday.

"The patient is now undergoing treatment at the COVID-19 treatment block and isolation ward of the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences (JNIMS) in Imphal," the official said.

He said that in connection with the new patient, contact tracing and active surveillance in the containment zone would be done immediately.

According to the family members of the new patient, the youth had gone to Mumbai for the treatment of his father who is suffering from cancer.

The youth's mother, who too had accompanied them, had succumbed to nCoV in Mumbai. The northeastern state of Manipur was declared COVID-19 free by Chief Minister N. Biren Singh on April 19 after two people in the state had recovered from the dreaded disease.

A 23-year-old woman, who had returned to Manipur from the UK in March, became the first coronavirus case in the entire northeastern region. She was also the first COVID-19 patient to recover in the northeast.

Manipur became the second State after Goa to become coronavirus free after the State's second patient, a 65-year-old man who had attended the Tablighi Jamaat's congregation in Delhi's Nizamuddin in March, was discharged on April 21, three-day after he was recovered from the virus. (IANS)

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