PANAJI: A middle aged man hailing from Delhi, who returned from China recently was admitted to Goa Medical College (GMC) and Hospital at Bambolim on Tuesday. Addressing a press conference in the city, Secretary (Health) Sanjay Kumar, IAS, said, ''We got one suspect case today (Tuesday). The patient has been admitted in GMC. His sample has been sent to National Institute of Virology, Pune.'' Director of Health Services Dr Jose D'Sa said the person admitted in the hospital had been in Kunshan city of China, around 750kms away from Wuhan in China, where coronavirus outbreak originated. "The man along with his wife had travelled to China and arrived in Goa a week ago. He is just a traveller from China. He has just got a little soar throat. So we decided to keep him under observation at Goa Medical College. We have collected the samples and sent it to NIV, Pune. We will be getting the reports in a couple of days,'' said GMC Dean Dr Shivanand Bandekar. The GMC had opened a separate ward with more than 30 beds and is also in the process of setting up two-bedded ICU to treat coronavirus patients. Also two wards with seven beds has been set up at the sub-district hospital at Chicalim to admit suspected patients arriving at the Dabolim airport," Dr Bandekar said. According to Bandekar, till date no deaths have been reported in India and the samples have been tested negative. Explaining about the virus, Dr Bandekar said, "Patients may have symptoms like common cold but it will be severe. Patient will have difficulty in breathing and so may have pneumonia. Common cold does lead to pneumonia very quickly. Most of the patients will have breathlessness, headache, palpitation and at the same time their kidney gets affected and there may be organ failure. We do not know anything in detail about the virus because it has just come. It is transmitted from sea life to humans. So lot of study has to be done. Right now there is no cure and vaccine. Hence we need to protect ourselves.'' He said as per World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics, 53 people were discharged after they got full blown disease of coronavirus. Meanwhile, the State Task Force constituted by the government to monitor cases of coronavirus in the State held its first meeting at the Directorate of Health Services, here. After the meeting, Secretary (Health) and Task Force chairman Sanjay Kumar said, "We wanted to see what are our preparations and what precautionary measures we should take so that any possible case coming to our knowledge, we should be ready. We had meeting with officials of port and airport authority, doctors and Indian Medical Associations and we took stock of equipments, masks and other preparations that we should undertake. We are in comfortable position to deal with the situation.'' He said in India many suspected cases had been reported but none of them had been found to be positive. Kumar said the State team was talking to Central team and other stakeholders so that there was reporting if suspected case came. He said a full-fledged advertisement would be issued to make people aware of the coronavirus. ''Thermal scanners have been put at airports having direct flights from China. As a precautionary measure we have requested Ministry of Civil Aviation to provide thermal scanner at our airport also even as there were no direct flights from China to Goa,'' Kumar said.