Anantnag: The worst fears associated with Anantnag man tested positive for COVID-19 recently seem to be coming true after at least 8 of his contacts have tested positive for the virus thus far, taking the overall tally of the district’s positive patients to 10.

Only one of the positive patients is from elsewhere in the district (Dooru area). The rest of the nine are from the same village, Nowgam in Shangus area, where the 41 year old “ spreader” lives.

He contracted the infection from a baker’s shop in Anantnag town, where he worked and unaware of the condition he went back home to live among his family and friends. He was tested positive on around April 15.

On April 18, Kashmir Reader did a story on how he could turn out to be a “super spreader” given his unbridled contact history. This newspaper reported how he complained of diarrhea a few days after he went home.

The man in subsequent days had visited a Primary Health Centre (PHC) in Nowgam, a private doctor’s clinic and then the district hospital Anantnag for his treatment.

Soon after he was tested positive, more than 257 of his primary, secondary and tertiary contacts were tracked and put under quarantine. Samples were taken from them and so far eight have tested positive of the virus.

The Nodal Officer for COVID-19 in Anantnag, Peer Farhat, confirmed it. “8 of his contacts have so far tested positive. This includes none of his family members,” Farhat said, “All of them are doing fine for now,”

He said that around 125 test reports are still awaited from the samples taken from his contacts.

“We have our fingers crossed. Hope all of them turn out to be negative,” Farhat said.

The challenge however has gotten bigger as the administration now is trying to track down the contacts of the 8 people tested positive for COVID-19, who are obviously going to run into hundreds.

With the district administration the people of Anantnag have their fingers crossed as well.

Suhail A Shah