Coronavirus: Tripura youth dies in Malaysia

Agartala/Guwahati: In the first reported death due to coronavirus infection from northeast India, a 22-year-old youth from Tripura died in a Malaysian hospital after he was reportedly infected by the dreaded virus, family sources said on Thursday.

However, Tripura Health and Family Welfare Director Radha Debbarma said the government has no information about the youth’s death due to coronavirus infection in Malaysia.

Following advisories of the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry, all state governments and Central agencies, including the Airport Authority of India (AAI), have set up special screening counters and desks.

According to Sahajan Mia in Bishalgarh (under western Tripura’s Sepahijala district), his son Manir Hossain, 22, died in a Malaysian hospital after he was reportedly infected by the Novel Coronavirus.

“Manir since 2018 had been working in a restaurant in Malaysia. On Wednesday restaurant staff informed us over phone that he had died in a hospital due to coronavirus,” Mia told the media.

He said with the help of the state government, the family was trying to bring the body back home.

According to the family, Hossain, a cricket player, got married in 2016. As he was unable to get a job in Tripura, he went to Malaysia in 2018 and since then had been working in a restaurant there.

Meanwhile, Tripura Health and Family Welfare Director Radha Debbarma told IANS on Thursday the government has set up a special screening desk and counter at the Agartala airport and in the integrated checkpost along the India-Bangladesh border at Akhaurah, near Agartala.

She said a special unit has also been set up in the Govind Ballabh Pant Medical College and Hospital and the microbiology unit was also alerted.

In Guwahati, Assam’s Health and Family Welfare Department has issued instructions to the joint directors in all the districts to make arrangements to screen persons for coronavirus if they have returned from China or Nepal, or have come in contact with people who have visited the countries, where the disease has infected the people.

Assam’s Health and Family Welfare Department Director Rathindra Bhuyan said in Guwahati that isolated observation beds have been set up in district hospitals and medical colleges of the state to treat suspected patients in case anybody is found to be affected by coronavirus.

Guwahati or any other northeastern states’s airport does not have direct flight connectivity with any of the cities in China or Nepal. However, people from Nepal and other countries along the northeastern states occasionally come to northeast India by road.

According to officials in Imphal, Shillong and Aizawl, similar screening test counters have been set up at airports and border entry points. Eight northeastern states, including Sikkim, share 5,437 km international boundaries with China, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal.

IANS