Local cases in stable condition, contact tracing continues

The two recent local cases are in a stable condition. In a virtual Ministry of Health press conference on Thursday, CMO Dr Roshan Parasram also announced that seven out of the nine primary contacts who interacted with patient 139 have been swabbed.

The patient's family members were swabbed, and their results returned negative. He said the ministry is still trying to contact two more people who had interacted with the patient.

The patient tested positive on Tuesday, after experiencing flu-like symptoms seven days before. The patients visited a health centre for medical assistance and was isolated before testing positive hours later.

On Wednesday, another local case was recorded, pending epidemiological investigations. This brought the number of cases to 141. Both patients have no travel history.

Parasram said the family will be monitored and will be under home quarantine for 14 days, starting from the date the patient was removed to the house.

"They will be monitored both by the Ministry of Health, as well as the TTPS for the next 14 days to ensure that we follow them up for the full time and if symptoms develop, they will be swabbed at that time again."

Parasram is asking the public to pay attention to flu-like symptoms, particularly fever, coughs, sore throat, runny nose, headaches, body pain, acute diarrhoea and vomiting, shortness of breath and extreme weakness.

In children, he asked parents to look out for Kawasaki like syndromes, which include redness of the fingers' tips on the tools—called covid19 fingers— shortness of breath and irregular heartbeat.