A seven-month-old infant and a one-and-a-half-year-old toddler, from Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, respectively, tested positive for novel coronavirus on Friday – the youngest coronavirus patients in Maharashtra.
Both are close contacts of family members who have tested positive and are admitted at HBT Trauma Care Centre and Kasturba Hospital in Mumbai, respectively According to the BMC health department, the infection spread to the sevenmonth-old boy in Mumbai through his mother, who has a travel history to Saudi Arabia.
She had tested positive for coronavirus earlier, and is undergoing treatment at HBT Trauma Care Centre in Jogeshwari. The 18-month-old boy from Navi Mumbai is the eighth coronavirus positive case to be reported from the neighbouring city, and has been admitted at Kasturba hospital in Mumbai.
Balasaheb Sonawane, chief health officer of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC), said that the boy had come in close contact with his grandfather, a cleric (maulvi), who also tested positive and is currently admitted at Kasturba Hospital.
The civic body had sent samples of the family members and their domestic help for tests after the cleric tested positive on March 25. The son of the cleric also tested positive earlier this week. The domestic help has also tested positive for coronavirus. Sonawane said that the cleric had come in contact with some Philippine citizens at a mosque in Vashi. One of the Filipinos tested positive and died last Sunday night at the Kasturba Hospital due to kidney failure.
A group of nine Filipinos had come to India on a religious tour in the first week of March and had stayed at the mosque. One of them developed symptoms on March 12, and later tested positive for coronavirus. Later, two more Philippine citizens from the group tested positive.
After the cleric tested positive for coronavirus, at least 53 people, who were present at the mosque when the Filipino group visited it, have been home quarantined, said Sonawane. As many as 586 people have been advised home quarantine in Navi Mumbai and 82 are under institutional quarantine.
There are seven persons in an isolation ward at the Vashi civic hospital. While 54 persons have completed 14 days of quarantine, 26 persons have tested negative
