25 COVID-19 Contract COVID-19

VOA News

Twenty-five members of an Indian family from Sangli in Maharashtra have tested positive for COVID-19, according to a Press Trust of India report.  

The account said four family members who had been in Saudi Arabia tested positive for the virus on March 23.   

A week later, 21 more family members, including a two-year-old boy also tested positive.  

India officials blame the quick transmission of the virus on the family’s tight living quarters.  

Collector Abhijeet Chaudhari told PTI, “These 25 patients belong to a big family living in a congested housing set up and because of that, they got infected.”  

Local authorities say there was no community transmission of the virus.  

Officials say the four who had been in Saudi Arabia came back to India through the Mumbai airport on March 12 before screening for the virus had begun.  

A list of Sangli residents who had recently returned from foreign locations did not include the names of the four family members, local officials said.  I 

“These four people were traced during our own checking here,” C .S. Salunkhe, a district civil surgeon, told PTI. 

Last week India began a 21-day lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus in the densely populated South Asian nation.  

Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the country for “forgiveness” for the lengthy shutdown during a radio address Sunday.  “But these are special circumstances,” he said. “This is a battle for life and death.” 

India has 1,071 confirmed cases of the virus, Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Monday.