Kolkata: Covid-19 infected youth's parents, drivers test negative for novel coronavirus

According to reports, swab samples of those four persons, who are kept in hospital isolation, were sent to the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (ICMR-NICED) and all were found negative for Covid-19 after the first test.

"Though these four persons have tested negative for novel coronavirus, they will be kept in quarantine for next 14 days and their samples will be tested again within this period," a senior official in the state health department said.

Earlier on Tuesday, an 18-year-old student of the Oxford University, who came back from the UK on Sunday, tested positive for Covid-19, making it the first case in Kolkata as well as West Bengal.

Later it was revealed that the youth ignored doctors' advice to visit Beliaghata ID hospital, and visited multiple locations, including a shopping mall, restaurant and club, across the city and met few people.

It was also reported that the youth's bureaucrat mother visited Writers Building as well as state secretariat Nabanna on Monday while his father, who is a government doctor posted in Nadia district's Krishnanagar, met at least eight people and checked up few patients after coming in contact with his Covid-19 infected son.

"Our efforts to identify all the persons, who came in contact with the youth, his parents and drivers, are currently underway and we will send them all to home quarantine," a health department official said.

Meanwhile, West Bengal's home secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay, who held a meeting with the Covid-19 infected youth's bureaucrat mother on Monday, and his wife, Calcutta University's vice-chancellor Sonali Chakravarty Banerjee, have gone into self house isolation as a precautionary measure.

All floors of the state secretariat, Nabanna, were sterilized in the morning while the chambers of the infected youth's mother at Nabanna and Writers Building have been sealed.

Presently, as many as 25 persons are in hospital isolation while 17557 persons have been kept in-home quarantine in West Bengal, according to the latest update.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)