Don’t Be A Super-Spreader, Says Subroto Bagchi Referring To South Korea’s ‘Patient 31’

Bhubaneswar: A day after detection of the third coronavirus case in Odisha, Chief Spokesperson on COVID-19 Subroto Bagchi on Friday referred to ‘Patient 31’ of South Korea and warned people against becoming super-spreader.

Bagchi said that the 60-year-old man, who tested positive for the killer virus last night, had visited three hospitals in Bhubaneswar and this might have serious implications. The patient had also come in contact with an Odisha Assembly staffer and travelled back to Bhubaneswar from Delhi in an IndiGo flight.

“During phase-1, the focus was on foreign returnees and later the surveillance shifted to people coming to Odisha from other states. With the third confirmed case, we see a possibility of the outbreak moving into stage 3, which is community transmission,” he said.

PATEINT 31

The coronavirus outbreak in South Korea seemed under control till mid-February.

An elderly woman with pneumonia-like symptoms from the city of Daegu then tested positive for the killer virus on February 18. The sexagenarian was the 31st coronavirus case in the country and had reportedly ignored doctors’ recommendations to undergo coronavirus examination twice.

Prior to being diagnosed with the infection, she had reportedly attended church services and also a friend for a buffet lunch at a hotel while suffering from fever.

From a buffet restaurant to a Korean-style public bath and then to church twice, Patient 31 is estimated to have come in contact with some 1,160 people, a report in the India Today said.

The coronavirus cases in South Korea skyrocketed thereafter and three-fifths of these on March 18 were from the church whose services she attended, according to Reuters.