India's First Covid Patient Test Positive Again For The Virus

The woman is presently at home and "she is OK" a doctor told reporters.

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Thrissur: India's first Covid patient, a medical student from Thrissur, Kerala has tested positive again for the virus. She was getting ready to leave for Delhi for study so her samples were tested. 

The RT-PCR result turned out to be positive, she is at home but is okay. 

"She is reinfected with COVID-19. Her RT-PCR is positive, antigen is negative. She is asymptomatic," Thrissur DMO Dr K J Reena told PTI. The woman is presently at home and "she is OK," the doctor said.

According to an NCBI report, on January 27, 2020, the 20-year-old visited the Emergency Department in General Hospital, Thrissur, Kerala, with a one-day history of dry cough and sore throat she had no history of fever, rhinitis or shortness of breath.

The third-year medical student from Wuhan university tested positive for coronavirus, becoming the country's first COVID-19 patient, days after she had returned home following semester holidays.

After nearly three weeks of treatment at the Thrissur Medical College Hospital, she had tested negative twice for the virus, confirming her recovery, and was discharged on February 20, 2020.

While recounting the story last year, she told NDTV, that on January 13th, when Wuhan university had closed for a four-week vacation, she hadn't anticipated the outbreak. "Everything seemed normal on the streets. By January 17th, people on the streets were wearing masks and then the situation quickly worsened," she was quoted as saying.

"Our holiday was for only four weeks. In June, we have a longer holiday and I thought, considering the airfare, that I would go to India then," she recalled.

"But as the situation worsened, we booked tickets for January 23. We had to fly out from Kunning to Kolkata because flight services were already restricted. On January 22, we got information from our seniors that the airports are going to be shut. We immediately went to the airport to get a connecting flight to Kunning. Amid the delay, we took a train instead," she told NDTV.