The Mysuru mystery

A 35-year-old man with no travel or contact history has caught Covid-19. Authorities are struggling to find out how

- PRATHIMA NANDAKUMAR

The curious case of Patient 52 in Karnataka is puzzling authorities in Mysuru district. The 35-year-old patient, an employee of the pharma company Jubilant Generics in Nanjangud, was found to have COVID-19 on March 26. Within 10 days, as many as 24 employees of the company and their relatives had tested positive, qualifying it as a COVID-19 cluster.

How Patient 52 was infected remains a mystery. Since he has no travel or contact history, the main suspect is a consignment of “raw material” from China imported by Jubilant Generics in early March. A sample of the material has been sent to the National Institute of Virology, Pune, and the district administration in Mysuru is anxiously waiting for the result.

“We are in the process of identifying how Patient 52 got infected,” said additional chief secretary Jawaid Akhtar. “We have also taken swab samples from the packaging material that the company received from China. We are following procedure and are trying to get some leads.”

The unspecified raw material is an active pharmaceutical ingredient that was reportedly shipped to Chennai and later dispatched by road to Nanjangud via Bengaluru. The district administration has been tight-lipped about the case, but Nanjangud MLA B. Harshvardhan has demanded that the criminal investigation department inquire into the matter. He wants to keep Jubilant Generics under lockdown until the source of infection is established.