With three of the nine people, who are confirmed to have contracted COVID-19 in the Nilgiris being residents of Khandal in Udhagamandalam, the district administration has imposed serious restrictions on the thousands of residents living in the area, which has been declared as a containment zone.
With heavy police strength being deployed in the area to ensure people do not step out of their houses unnecessarily, a team of volunteers from the area have been picked to assist people in getting essential commodities delivered to the houses of people living in the containment zone.
Police said that in order to ensure that the directives are followed, 18 checkposts have been set up in the Khandal area alone to strictly enforce the lockdown. The volunteers’ role will be to deliver essential supplies to people in the houses which are in the quarantine area.
According to officials, the group of 32 volunteers, picked by the revenue department and the district administration are primarily youngsters, who actively wanted to get involved to help and assist members of their community.
“We noticed that a lot of elderly residents in the area were putting themselves at risk of being infected while going out to buy commodities. So youngsters in the area volunteered to assist residents by procuring essential commodities for people and delivering them to their homes,” said one of the volunteers, who added that the volunteers are following every precaution to ensure that they do not get infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Nilgiris district police officials said that the volunteers were delivering food, provisions and vegetables purchased from shops to the residents living in Khandal. They added that the health of the volunteers is monitored on a daily basis to ensure that they have not been infected by COVID-19.