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As pandemic grows, first patient found with both dengue and COVID-19
The first patient possibly confirmed as having both dengue and COVID-19 in the country has been reported from the Negombo Hospital, the Sunday Times learns.
The patient is a 29-year-old man who had come into contact with COVID-19 at a fish market, the Head of Negombo’s Dengue Centre, Dr. LakKumar Fernando said.
“The patient came with high fever and we tested him for dengue through an antigen test as well as for COVID-19 through an RT-PCR test. While the dengue test came positive on the third day, the RT-PCR test results came on Day 5,” Dr. Fernando said.
As the patient is clinically stable with regard to dengue, he has been transferred to the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID).
Referring to the major dilemma being faced by hospitals, Dr. Fernando said this patient was in isolation with three others, also having dengue, in a separate five-bed area in the Dengue Unit. These three — one of whom has gone into the critical leaking stage of dengue with the platelet count dropping to 15,000 — and their relatives looking after them have been exposed to COVID-19.
While the three patients are being treated in isolation, their relatives have been sent into home quarantine.
The danger of people contracting both dengue and COVID-19 came as Colombo city reported as many as 2,336 COVID-19 positive cases from October 3 to November 6.
In this period, the health authorities have conducted 9,500 random RT-PCR tests in Colombo city, said the Colombo Municipality’s Medical Officer of Health (Epidemiology & Statistics), Dr. Dinuka Guruge, pointing out that on Friday alone they performed 400 random community tests which found around 19 positive cases.
She added that finding positive cases was easier as there was a curfew in place. They are currently testing first-line contacts of these positive cases in the morning and receiving the results the same day around 9 p.m. As such they are able to get the people affected by COVID-19 to hospitals or intermediate care centres quickly, thus containing the spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, the maternal death review with regard to the mother who died about 15 days after childbirth at the Marawila Hospital is due on Tuesday (November 10). The mother had been admitted to the hospital with respiratory and cardiac symptoms.