Coronavirus positive Coimbatore girl landed in Bengaluru; took train from the city

A 25-year-old student, who is the seventh patient in Tamil Nadu to test positive for COVID-19, had reached her hometown of Coimbatore via New Delhi and Bengaluru from Spain, where she was pursuing her MBA.

The student, who is quarantined at the ESIC hospital in Coimbatore since March 18, had come to the hospital voluntarily for testing after one of her friends in Spain was tested positive for COVID-19 virus, officials said on Sunday.

They said the young girl had taken the Yeshvantpur-Kannur Express on March 16 from Bengaluru and reached Coimbatore the next day. The student, who boarded a flight from Spain, landed in New Delhi on March 13 and took a flight to Bengaluru on March 15 and reached the city same day.

“Since she had taken different modes of transport and had travelled through different cities, authorities in the Bengaluru and New Delhi have been alerted about her travel,” an official said, adding that she travelled in a reserved coach of the train that runs between Bengaluru and Kannur in Kerala through several cities of Tamil Nadu.

Officials and doctors said the student’s samples were collected immediately because of her travel history and her contact with a person already tested positive. Also, the girl had symptoms like fever, they said. The girl, whose samples were collected on March 18, tested positive for Covid-19 virus on Sunday morning.

The testing took a few days as the samples were sent to the King’s Institute in Chennai. With Coimbatore getting its own testing centre on Saturday, subsequent tests to check on her infection will be done in the industrial city itself.

“The girl is stable, and she is doing fine. Sunday is her fifth day in isolation and there is nothing to worry,” another official said, adding that two family members of the student and the taxi driver who ferried her from the railway station to home have been kept under isolation at their respective homes.

When asked whether the student had stayed somewhere in Bengaluru, the official replied in the negative. “She had informed us that she took the train from Bengaluru on March 16. We will talk to her and get all details of her travel and inform the respective states,” the official added.

He said efforts are on to trace all those who came in contact with her and home quarantine them.