A 36-year-old traffic head constable (P1692) deployed in the Pulakeshi Nagar (Frazer Town) traffic police station in East Bengaluru has tested positive for COVID-19.
The constable is one of the five people who tested positive on Friday in Bengaluru Urban, while five more tested positive in Bengaluru Rural.
The head constable and a woman constable with whom he worked have been quarantined. A senior officer said the head constable used to drop his woman colleague at her paying guest accommodation in Hennur after work. The woman’s test results are awaited.
BBMP officials have sanitised the police station and the surrounding area. It is suspected that the head constable may have come across an infected person while he was on vehicle-checking duty or may have visited the containment zone in the nearby Shivajinagar.
"About 30 policemen from the Pulakeshi Nagar police station have been quarantined,” said a senior official from the Bengaluru Urban district surveillance team, adding that a patient flowchart is being prepared to ascertain his secondary contacts. The woman constable continues to be under home quarantine, the official added.
“We are checking his call data record to see the areas he had been to as part of his work. We will come to know if he had visited the containment zone,” the official further said.
One case in Austin Town
A 42-year-old woman from Austin Town is the only positive case with Influenza-Like Illness (ILI) in Bengaluru Urban. The woman went to a local clinic with ILI symptoms and was diagnosed with pneumonia.
“The woman's swab tests revealed COVID-19 disease. We don’t know the source of the infection,” a senior BBMP officer said.
Two men, aged 42 and 52, are contacts of a Padarayanapura patient, P706. A 36-year-old woman from Bengaluru West also tested positive, though officials are still tracing her contacts and are not sure who infected her.
Three Bengaluru Rural women returning from Maharashtra tested positive, while there is a Covid-19 case each with SARI and ILI.