Modi recovers, top Gujarat health official gets swine flu

GANDHINAGAR - Gujarat’s principal health secretary is down with swine flu and is among several top officials to be quarantined even as Chief Minister Narendra Modi has recovered from it and is getting ready to join office Friday.

Ravi Saxena, principal secretary, health, has tested positive for the H1N1 virus. He has been quarantined at his residence in Ahmedabad. Health commissioner Mukesh Puri has tested negative, but has been isolated as he was in close touch with Saxena.

They are among 11 senior officials who have been quarantined on suspicion of swine flu. Saxena is responding well to treatment and Puri says there is no cause for alarm.

Over a hundred people, from top bureaucrats to junior employees and a galaxy of top industrialists who accompanied Modi as part of a business delegation to Russia, are under varying degrees of surveillance for the H1N1 virus.

Modi, 60, was diagnosed with swine flu last week after his return from Russia.

Chief secretary D. Rajgopalan and principal secretary, energy, S. Jagadeeshan, who had accompanied the chief minister, have completed their quarantine periods and returned to office Thursday.

An exercise is afoot to mark out officers and employees who had interacted with Saxena in the last few days for precautionary checks and even isolation. Incidentally, many of his colleagues had come in contact with him at a meeting of the officers’ tea club within the secretariat Tuesday.

Forty people have died of swine flu in Gujarat and about 300 cases of the H1N1 virus have been reported so far.