Jharkhand reported its third confirmed Covid-19 patient on Sunday from Bokaro, after the first two from Ranchi and Hazaribagh last week.

The woman who tested positive is in her 40s and a resident of a densely populated locality in Chandrapura, around 20km from Bokaro town. She had visited Bangladesh with five others of the same locality for about a week and had returned to Bokaro on March 15.

Health secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni told The Telegraph that the woman was associated with the Tablighi Jamaat and had visited Bangladesh with five others. All six were tested for coronavirus and her results came back positive.

“We are watchful and keeping tabs on the situation,” he said.

Bokaro deputy commissioner Mukesh Kumar said that the woman was asymptomatic but tested Covid-19 positive. She has been admitted to Bokaro General Hospital, where she is stable under close monitoring.

Bokaro district administration also started the sanitisation of the woman’s locality, with a population of 20,000.

An official said that the six persons of three families had visited Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.

Due to the coronavirus threat, the state government had ordered people to share their recent travel history.

“But these people were staying in their homes and did not voluntarily disclose their travel history to the administration,” the official said, admitting that the district administration’s alarm bells rang only when a number of people who had attended the Tablighi Jamaat programme in Delhi were tested positive.

He said that this group had not been to Delhi.

Less than a week after they returned from Bangladesh, the local administration asked this group of six persons to stay in home isolation. On April 2, all the six persons were put under quarantine at the Guru Govind Singh Engineering College in Chas, a town in Bokaro district.

The official said that now they were trying to ascertain how the group came back to Bokaro, through which route, whether by bus or plane, and who all they came in contact on the way, as well as after they reached their homes.

DC Mukesh Kumar confirmed the administration was closely probing their travel history and the persons that this woman came in contact with. “This exercise will take some time. But there no need of panic because the situation is under control,” he said.

This apart, across the 24 districts of Jharkhand, the state government has so far identified as many as 140 persons who had participated in the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Nizamuddin, Delhi, last month, from where a number of Covid-19 cases have emerged.