Curtorim on tenterhooks as well-known village doctor tests positive

Team Herald

Margao: Curtorim’s most popular doctor is a patient. With most families of the village and neighbouring ones going to him for years, the news of him testing positive caused worry and alarm in these laid back villages, where everyone felt the virus would never find its way.

But now we have it. Curtorim, the granary of Goa, has 8 cases while neighbouring Raia has 2.

Both these villages, close to the commercial capital of Goa, Margao, are on tenterhooks. The people who met the doctor who has been tested positive for COVID made a beeline to the local Primary Health Centre to get checked.

Meanwhile, according to local sources in the health ecosystem of the area, the figure of positive cases in Curtorim may go up as some of the traced contacts of the COVID patients, including patients of the doctor, have shown flu-like symptoms. 

Contact tracing and swab collection of people in the vicinity of the positive cases were done in Curtorim on Wednesday. Curtorim village is unanimous on stopping all the non-Goans vendors entering into the village. 

The doctor who was tested positive has been shifted to the COVID hospital in Margao. On Tuesday and Wednesday, lots of swabs were collected from the persons that the positive persons contacted. The people staying around the doctor’s house were contacted and their swabs were collected.

Moreover, when villagers got to know that their doctor tested positive, many people who had visited him came up to the PHC and got themselves tested. A male person and his two relatives too have been tested positive on Wednesday, taking the positive case count on Wednesday to four and the total to eight, in Curtorim.

The Medical Superintendent of the South Goa district hospital, Dr Ira Almeida said “The swab collection of the persons contacted by the persons who are positive has been done by the PHC. The samples are yet to be analyzed,” she said. 

The doctor in-charge at the Primary Health Care centre in Curtorim said  “We have collected swabs and tested the family of the doctor and the persons who came to him for treatment.”

Raia ground report

Meanwhile, the contact tracing and swab collection of the persons who met the two positive case patients from Raia too was done. One of the persons had come to the panchayat some days ago. The staff and the public representatives of the Raia panchayat have requested for extensive testing of the persons that these positive patients contacted.