Walled City turns fortress again

In the battle against coronavirus, AMC sets up checkposts at 13 different entry points to Walled City to screen everyone who comes in or goes out for symptoms; mega screening of residents to start today

After several Covid-19 cases were found in specific pockets of Ahmedabad city, the civic body has decided to screen all the people living in the Old City area, also known as the Walled City, as part of its mega drive from Thursday, officials said.

On Wednesday, 20,000 commuters were screened at the 13 checkposts and samples for coronavirus testing were drawn from 550 of them. Ahmedabad has several Muslimdominated areas like Kalupur, Jamalpur, Dariapur and Gomtipur, where some localities were already “cluster quarantined” after a number of Covid-19 patients were found in quick succession.

“While 700 health teams are already on the field to screen people, a mega drive will be launched tomorrow to cover the entire population living inside the Walled City, Ahmedabad Municipal Commissioner Vijay Nehra told reporters on Wednesday.

At present, all the fire brigade vehicles as well as drones are being used to spray disinfectant chemical in the Walled City area, he said.

“As many as 700 teams are in the field since Monday for conducting door-to-door surveillance. Tomorrow, there will be a one-day mega drive to screen each and every resident of the Walled City. We will conduct check-up using hand-held thermal temperature guns,” he said.

So far, 83 coronavirus positive cases have been found in Ahmedabad and four of them have died. The Centre has already declared Ahmedabad as one of the hotspots in terms of the spread of coronavirus.

“To stop the spread of virus in other parts of the city, ‘Coronavirus checkposts’ have been set up at 13 different entry points of the Walled City since early (Wednesday) morning and everyone coming in and going out are being checked to see if they are symptomatic or not,” Nehra said.

In addition, the civic body has shut down Nehru Bridge over Sabarmati river. The ever-bustling Kalupur fruit and vegetables market was also shut from Wednesday. “We are following South Korea’s pattern of aggressive testing. It’s called ‘chasing the virus’ strategy. We are aiming to identify all the cases through an intense surveillance and testing mechanism. Within two days, we have collected 1,250 samples,” he said.


Safai kamdars screened

AMC also screened 1,024 staff of door-to-door garbage collection team and collected samples from 210 of them. The staff included collectors as well as van drivers. Sweepers and garbage collectors come under high-risk staff.

Vegetable vendors given e-rickshaws

Vegetable hawkers were provided 24 e-rickshaws in the Walled City area for quick and efficient distribution of vegetables. Usually, vendors use pushcarts to sell vegetables.

It may be noted that six out of 14 clusters identified in the city fall in the central zone of AMC which includes almost the entire 5 sq km Walled City area with a population of more than 10 lakh.

Conduct free Covid-19 tests: SC directs Centre

The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed that COVID-19 tests in approved government labs or private laboratories should be conducted free of cost and the Centre should immediately issue directions in this regard.

In Ahmedabad, testing is done by private labs Unipath Specialty and Supratech Micropath besides the Civil Hospital. Till now, the labs have been charging Rs 4,500 per test. A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and S Ravindra Bhat issued directions on a PIL filed by advocate Shashank Deo Sudhi seeking a direction to the Centre and authorities to provide free of cost testing facility for COVID-19 to all citizens in the country.