Only days after the authorities started randomly testing pregnant women in this southern Kashmir district for Covid-19, the samples of 12 among them returned positive today.
Five among them are from outside the designated red zones and have no travel history either.
“The samples of 12 pregnant women from Anantnag tested at CD hospital lab is positive,” a health official told the Greater Kashmir.
He said seven of them are from already designated red or buffer zones.
“The remaining five are from five different villages wherein till now no case had surfaced,” the official said. “They have no travel history either.”
Chief Medical Officer Anantnag Dr. Mukhtar Ahmad said the pregnant women who have tested positive are being contacted and are to be isolated and quarantined.
“We are also tracing all their contacts. They will also be quarantined and their samples collected,” he said.
The list available with the Greater Kashmir suggests that seven pregnant women have tested positive in the Covid-19 hot spots of Nowgam in Shangus and its adjoining red and buffer zones villages in Achabal.
The villages are CS Pora, Sombran, Tosu, main Achabal, Telwani, Oodsoo and Imoh.
Of the five other positive cases, one each is from Gandoora and Gutigund villages of Verinag and one each from Breenthi, Muniward and Zadipora villages of Anantnag Tehsil.
According to the protocols, all pregnant women have to be treated as Covid19 probable and those from red zones in the thirty-fourth week of pregnancy need to be tested aggressively.
However, in south Kashmir’s Anantnag, the authorities have decided to take the samples randomly from the expecting women residing outside of those risk zones as well.
The district has so far tested more than 600 pregnant women, out of which the samples of 17 have returned positive till date. Earlier five pregnant women whose samples were randomly taken had tested positive. They were, however, all from red zones.
Two among them have already recovered and three others who had normal delivery are being treated in isolation.