Covid Threat Looms Over CM Nitish? Bihar Ministers Attend Doctors' Event. Later, Many Attendees Test +ve

The fresh Covid surge, fuelled by the new Omicron variant, has taken a toll on several popular faces in India. After top names in the Bollywood industry, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday morning tested positive for coronavirus. The threat now seems to be looming over Kejriwal’s Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar and state health minister Mangal Pandey.

The two recently attended the 96th National Annual Conference of IMA and 82nd Annual Meeting of Central Council of IMA in Patna, which was attended by at least 20 doctors who later tested positive for Covid, sources told News18. Around 5,000 medicos attended the event.

The tally of infected doctors has been rising in Patna. As many as 168 doctors and medical students from Nalanda Medical College Hospital (NMCH) have tested positive so far, while 15 from Patna Medical College, six from AIIMS and one from Medanta.

Speaker of the legislative assembly Vijay Kumar Sinha and education minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary were also among the political dignitaries to attend the valedictory function of the IMA.

Around 75 doctors and medical students from Patna’s Nalanda Medical College Hospital (NMCH) were among the 352 new cases to test positive for Covid-19 on Sunday, as the number of active cases in the state shot up to 1,074, said state health officials.

AIIMS-Patna nodal officer Dr Sanjeev Kumar had earlier said that two assistant professors, including one who recently returned from Andaman and Nicobar, at the hospital, were found to be infected on Saturday.

A health manager of the Guru Gobind Singh hospital in Patna City has also tested positive for Covid-19 for the fourth time, a report by Hindustan Times stated.

Patna has shown a sudden spurt in the number of Covid-19 cases, with 405 of the 749 active cases in the state, as per the government’s Covid-19 bulletin on Saturday. Of the 281 new cases, 136 were from Patna on Saturday. Gaya accounted for 70 and Munger 10.

Twelve have so far tested positive for Covid-19 of the estimated 306 people who returned to Patna from Omicron-affected countries, including the USA, UK and the Netherlands, in December. Swab samples of those testing positive have been sent for genome sequencing, the HT report quoted officials.

Several names in the entertainment industry, including Prem Chopra, Ekta Kapoor, Nora Fatehi and Mrunal Thakur, have also tested positive in the recent past. Actor John Abraham, who said that he’s vaccinated, was also infected along with his wife. But he added that both are experiencing mild symptoms.

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