Kohima/Guwahati: Caught between two Northeastern states, the fate of a 33-year-old COVID-19 patient, a native of Nagaland, is hanging in limbo.
According to the health officials in Guwahati, the lone COVID-19 patient from Nagaland, who is a trader by profession and is undergoing treatment at the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) since April 12, has again tested positive in the third test after his second test had returned negative.
While the Nagaland government continues to maintain that there is no COVID-19 positive case in the state, the Assam government’s coronavirus update makes no mention of the 33-year-old trader’s case either.
In most of his tweets, Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma mentioned only the positive and recovered cases of Assam.
None of Sarma’s tweet updates included the Nagaland trader being treated in Assam, except one which mentioned that a private hospital in Nagaland had referred a man from Dimapur to GMCH after he showed symptoms akin to the dreaded disease.
An Assam health official said that it was evident that the man was infected in Nagaland, but was sent to Guwahati “because the state could not take care of such a case”.
“If the Nagaland authorities want to keep their COVID-19 status clean, we ily Welfare Secretary Kesonyu Yhome, while briefing the media on Thursday evening, had said that the positive case from Nagaland has been added to the tally of Assam as he had tested positive in that state.
Yhome said the patient will be tested for a fourth time on April 26.
“A total of 543 samples out of 607 sent from Nagaland have tested negative while the results of 64 samples are awaited. The samples include the close contacts of the state’s lone positive case,” the official said.
According to the health officials in Guwahati, a private hospital in Dimapur, the largest city in Nagaland, had referred the patient to GMCH after he was found with symptoms of coronavirus.
The Dimapur-based trader belongs to an important business family, which was the first Hindi-speaking settler in Nagaland. (IANS)
