Centre issues advisory to states in view of Zika virus cases
The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday said it has issued an advisory to the states in view of the Zika virus cases reported in Maharashtra.
After a gap of about six months since the end of December in 2023, five new Covid-19 positive cases were reported at a private hospital in the southern part of the city. All the five patients were tested positive for coronavirus positive during post-surgical pathological investigations, it’s learnt.
The patients were infected by the Covid-19 virus within one week since 9 May when most of them were admitted to the private hospital for surgical procedures.
Three of them have been discharged after testing negative of the coronavirus while the other two are still undergoing treatment at the hospital. Their conditions are stable, hospital sources said.
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Fresh cases of KP-II, a new sub-variant of the Covid-19 virus, have been reported in some parts of the country, mainly in Mumbai since March. Already, 91 KP-II-affected patients have been recorded in the capital city of Maharashtra showing symptoms of fever, cough and cold, sore throat, shortness of breathing etc.
During November-December in 2023 several JN.1-affected patients were detected in West Bengal. JN.1, a sub-variant of Covid-19, had become dominant in India with reports of 60 per cent of coronavirus cases across the country in 2023.
“XBB, which was the dominant variant for a long period in the country, had been surpassed by JN.1. Now, KP-II, another sub-variant of Covid-19, is infecting people in some states. We have to keep a watch on the developments in our state also,” said a senior public health expert attached with the state health department.
Serological samples should be sent to the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in Kalyani in Nadia to confirm whether COVID positive cases have KP-II infections, he said requesting anonymity.
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