Bhutan detects yet another positive case of COVID-19 from outside the quarantine facility. The individual this time is a 25-year-old man who is a loader with the Regional Revenue and Customs Office in Phuentshogling.
Although the case was detected outside a quarantine facility, it is not a community transmission according to Prime Minister Dr Lotay Tshering. For now, the health ministry is investigating to establish the source of the case.
The patient is among the 181 loaders working at the transhipment areas in the Regional Revenue and Customs Office and the Mini Dry Port in Phuentshogling. After showing flu-like symptoms, he visited Phuentsholing hospital on Tuesday.
The loaders, since the first week of June, are kept separately in one of the schools as a safety protocol. Sources say, while loading and unloading processes, strict safety protocols are followed and do not come in contact with Indian drivers delivering the goods. Police, Desuups, BAFRA and customs officials monitor them. A separate bus, with two drivers, is also arranged to pick and drop the workers. According to one of the drivers, the bus is partitioned and the driver has no contact with the loaders. However, for now, both the drivers are quarantined.
During a press brief yesterday, Prime Minister Dr Lotay Tshering said the new case will not pose any additional risk since the case was detected in the individual who was “working in a mini dry port who has to follow protocols just like in a quarantine facility.”
At the same time, during a press briefing on Tuesday, the Prime Minister shared that the government plans to ascertain the evidence of possible local transmission of the virus in the country after the Gelegphu case. A 27-year-old in Gelephu tested positive on Monday and had come in close contact with people in Thimphu, Gelephu, and Paro.
“For now we are working with the mindset that she has entered the country bringing in the disease from outside. We also fear that she must have spread it to everyone who has come in close contact with her. At the same time, we are also looking at the possibilities of community transmission. For that, after tracing and testing all the contacts of the patient, we will also collect representative samples from different communities and ascertain the evidence of local transmission of the virus in the community as well,” said Lyonchhen.
To do that, the Health Ministry will stratify the community the patient visited and conduct a clustered survey.
“We are going to stratify the community into high risk, medium risk, and low risk and then from there take a representative sampling and do an RT-PCR test on these samplings. So, that will give us a clear picture of what is the pulse of the epidemic in that community,” said Dechen Wangmo, the Health Minister.
Meanwhile, all 137 primary contacts of the 27-year-old woman tested negative on the PCR test except for 14 individuals whose results are still pending. Likewise, 55 of them are put under facility quarantine and remaining on strict home quarantine.
Currently, there are 116 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country with three new cases detected in the last 24 hours.
Passang Dorji/Sonam Penjor
