A seven-year-old NRI girl passing through town has become the first swine-flu suspect to test positive after being quarantined at the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Beleghata.

“The National Institute of Communicable Diseases in Delhi has verbally informed the state public health engineering department that Shruti Ghosh’s nasal and throat swabs have tested positive for the H1N1 virus,” the nodal officer of the health department’s swine flu wing, Tapas Sen, told Metro.

Doctors at the hospital, so far in the news only for the sordid state of its flu isolation ward, immediately put Oman resident Shruti on a course of Tamiflu pills.

“It is a fully curable disease requiring basic treatment,” a doctor said.

Shruti, a resident of Oman, had arrived at Calcutta airport early on Tuesday along with her parents after holidaying in Australia. Father Saugata Ghosh, who had insisted that his daughter’s cough and fever were symptoms of bronchitis, was informed on Wednesday night about her testing positive after a “second test”.

“I am told that her first test was negative. I will appeal for a third round of testing,” Ghosh said.

Nasal and throat swabs drawn from Shruti’s mother Sonali, who was allowed to stay with her daughter in the isolation ward on Tuesday night, tested negative for the H1N1 virus. An official at the hospital said Shruti would now be “fully quarantined”.