Two persons including a British national tested Covid-19 positive in Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) conducted at the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International (NSCBI) airport in the city on Monday. The British national was taken to the state-run Infectious Disease (ID) Hospital at Beliaghata for isolation while the other person, who is a resident of Dwarbhanga in Bihar flew to his home state by a domestic flight before he could be taken to the hospital for quarantine. Sources at the airport said that the Covid positive patient from Bihar came from Bangkok and tested positive in a RAT test.

The state health department is yet to trace the details of the patient and is keeping in touch with the Bihar administration sensitizing the latter about him. On the other hand, the British national, who is a woman tourist, was coming from Kuala Lumpur and had been planning to visit Bodh Gaya. The health department sources said that the British Deputy High Commission’s office in the city has been informed about the patient. State Health Department sources said that whether she had been affected by the BF.7 sub-variant or not, would be clear only after the genome sequencing report is available.

Her specimen has been sent to Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine for that purpose.The health department with the help of the airport authorities would get details of the passengers of the two separate flights in which the two Covid patients had flown for contract tracing. Mr N S Nigam, principal secretary of health department, held a meeting with senior officials and Covid experts at Swasthya Bhaban on Monday to take stock of the existing infrastructure facilities, including masks, adequate medical oxygen supply arrangements and medicines in staterun hospitals for emergency treatment if a sudden spike in Covid cases happens in the state.

Swasthya Bhaban has earmarked three state-run hospitals ID Hospital, M R Bangur Hospital and Sambhunath Pandit Hospital for treatment of coronavirus patients. Every district health administration across the state has also been asked to earmark the district hospital for Covid cases treatment. On 24 December, after a meeting of top officials of the state Health Department, the state government drew up a six-point agenda for immediate precautionary measures to be taken for any emergency situation in the coming days. Stress on genome sequencing, ensuring sufficient supply of oxygen, keeping the ventilators in the Covid19 divisions in hospitals ready for emergency, and immediate purchase of testing kits were some of the points of the sixpoint agenda.