Panaji:In the ongoing COVID-19 saga, Goa may have found its own equivalent of South Korea's patient number 31, an infamous title conferred upon the country's 31st patient, who is believed to have spread the deadly virus to numerous people in Seoul.
In case of Goa, however, the 55-year-old patient, a US-returnee, was officially allowed to leave the isolation ward of a government facility near Panaji on March 25, before being summoned back by panicked hospital authorities in the evening after double-checking his COVID-19 positive status.
The patient had returned from the US earlier this month and had been in isolation for days.
On Friday, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said that 42 persons who the state's three COVID-19 positive patients -- including the 55-year-old -- had met since their return to Goa from overseas had been quarantined, and suggested that the positive trio had met many more.
The 55-year-old COVID-19 positive patient alone, according to sources, met nearly 20 persons.