From Mohalla clinic to Anti-CAA protest: Saudi arrived Patient 10 has sparked a Coronavirus nightmare in Delhi

The fears of the Coronavirus Pandemic exploding into a major crisis with a long chain reaction have come true, as Delhi’s patient number 10 who returned from Saudi Arabia earlier this month becoming an example of how one Wuhan virus patient can set off a chain reaction that becomes near impossible to stop.

As of now, her brother, mother two daughters and Mohalla clinic doctor have tested positive, setting off multiple chains. Her brother has participated at the Jahangirpuri anti-CAA protest after having come in contact with her. Her doctor is estimated to have seen over a hundred patients after having come in contact with her, and his family is suspected to be at risk to. The magnitude of this outbreak could be disastrous.

This bears stark resemblance with the ‘Patient 31’ in South Korea who had caused a major chain reaction landing the entire country into deep trouble, which even today battles the China-made disease with the number of patients nearing the 9,000-mark.

However, things were largely in control of the South Korean authorities till the 30th patient, but when ‘Patient 31’ did not employ social distancing and visited crowded places in days prior to her diagnosis, Coronavirus took off like anything in South Korea. Today, ‘Patient 31’ is believed to have triggered a mind-boggling 80 per cent of the total cases. This is the level of threat that every single person who gets infected with COVID-19 and doesn’t go through a quarantine period poses to the rest of the country. 

Ever since reports of foreign travellers jumping quarantines or not getting themselves properly screened at the airports started coming in, there was a palpable fear that anyone of those patients could turn out to be India’s ‘Patient 31’, and now as the chain of Delhi’s ‘Patient 10’ is tracked, it seems that India’s ‘Patient 31’ has arrived.

The concerned woman, a resident of East Delhi’s Dilshad Garden, is Delhi’s tenth reported case of the novel infection had travelled to Saudi Arabia on February 19 and returned on March 10. At the airport, she was received by her brother who now seems to have become the first person in the National Capital to have been infected by ‘Patient 10’. But developed symptoms of fever and cough only two days later, that is, March 12- once again corroborating the issue of long incubation periods and asymptomatic patients carrying the Coronavirus.

On March 12, she visited a local doctor and then visited the Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB) Hospital too three days later in a cab from where she was referred to the Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital. Thus, there was a considerable delay of five days before her diagnosis started formally and everyone whom she came into contact with during these five days would be at risk of having contracted the Coronavirus. She tested positive for the novel infection on March 17 and what happened thereafter is just mind-boggling.

Her brother and mother tested positive for the virus on March 20 and her two daughters aged 24 and 26 tested positive only a day later. On March 22, the local doctor who had seen her on March 12 also tested positive becoming the 30th reported case of Delhi. A chain reaction seems to have set in already.

The local doctor’s wife and children are showing symptoms and are facing a high risk of having taken the virus from him. Moreover, the doctor also saw a number of patients at his clinic between March 12, when he would have contracted the virus, and March 17. He also worked from the Mohanpuri Mohalla Clinic saw hundreds of patients, all of whom could have been infected as the local authorities try to track them down.

Also, the Saudi-arrived woman’s brother participated in a few mass gatherings before being tested positive, which is also a scary prospect given that he would have been the first one to get infected from his sister when he received her at the airport. The 19-year old son of ‘Patient 10’ is also quarantined though he is not showing any symptoms.

With this, the National Capital is at risk of the COVID-19 outbreak taking the shape of a major apocalypse. Not only ‘Patient 10’ and those who got infected in her immediate family and locality, but even those who would have contracted the virus from the local doctor, her brother or her daughters could set in further chains causing an exponential rise in the Coronavirus cases.

Now, as it becomes clear that Coronavirus carriers could be asymptomatic and clearing thermal screening at airports doesn’t essentially mean no infection, there could be many such cases that would have gone unnoticed for around a week- sufficient time to trigger chain reactions of the kind triggered in Delhi by ‘Patient 10’. Thus, it seems that India’s ‘Patient 31’ is here and lockdowns must be enforced much more strictly in order to avoid any further damage.