Five people suspected of being infected with coronavirus escaped from a hospital in India’s Maharashtra state and were traced later by the police, news agency ANI reported on Saturday.

The five people had escaped from the isolation ward of Mayo General Hospital in Nagpur city of the state.

One of them had tested negative, reports of four others were awaited.

The city had reported its first positive case of coronavirus on Wednesday after the IT professional, who had come from the United States on March 6 and got himself admitted at Mayo General Hospital. There are 16 suspected cases of coronavirus in the city.

Five more people — two in Nagpur and one each in Mumbai, Pune and Ahmednagar — tested positive for coronavirus on Friday, taking the number of infected in the state to 18.

The Maharashtra government has ordered a shutdown of cinema theatres, auditoriums, gymnasiums and swimming pools in Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Nagpur from Friday midnight till March 30 in view of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak.

Uddhav Thackeray said that since the majority of the state’s cases are from Pune at 10, the government has decided to shut down all schools in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad until the next order. This will not be applicable for students of Class 10 and 12 as their board examinations are being conducted.