Bengal Covid-19 patient flees hospital; remains untraceable for five days Sunita Subba was shifted to a Covid-19 hospital at Tribeni in Kalimpong after she was found to have contracted SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19

Pramod Giri, HT, 29 August 2020, Siliguri: A coronavirus (Covid-19) patient, who fled earlier this week from a hospital in Kalimpong, a hill station in north Bengal, remained untraceable until Thursday.

Samden Dukpa, executive director, the department of health and family welfare, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA), said, “The administration has launched a search operation. She is still untraceable.”

Police said initially, 34-year-old Sunita Subba, a resident of Takvar in Darjeeling, was admitted to the Darjeeling district hospital. Later, she was shifted to a Covid-19 hospital at Tribeni in Kalimpong after she was found to have contracted SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19.

She fled from the hospital on August 23. Subba is the third Covid-19 patient to have gone missing from hospitals in north Bengal.

On Thursday morning, Hanif Mia (42) fled from a Covid-19 hospital at Tapsikhata in north Bengal’s Alipurduar district . He was, however, traced by villagers and put under home quarantine.

In the first week of August, Covid-19 patient Bhim Rai (53), who was imprisoned for life, had escaped while he was being shifted to a hospital in Darjeeling. Rai was on parole.

He was traced to a dense forest in Darjeeling hills after 11 days. He tested Covid-19 negative after he was intercepted. His parole was cancelled and he was back in jail.

At least 22,825 people had tested positive for Covid-19 and 196 had died in the eight districts in north Bengal until Thursday.

(Courtesy & source- Hindustan Times- https://www.hindustantimes.com/kolkata/bengal-covid-19-patient-flees-hospital-remains-untraceable-for-five-days/story-rEsBgQxUPmDZyTNo4WaLcP.html)