Day 28 of coronavirus lockdown: Ground report from Indian cities

TIMESOFINDIA.COM | Apr 21, 2020, 12:44 IST

NEW DELHI: The total number of Covid-19 cases in the country stood at 18,601, as per reports from the health ministry. The death toll stood at 590, with 35 Covid-19 patients succumbing to complications related to the infection on Monday.

Here is a look at the updates on the outbreak of coronavirus from major Indian cities —

Delhi

One Covid-19 case has been found in Rashtrapati Bhavan: Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain.
The government eyes over 40,000 tests by the end of this week. Till Sunday, 24,387 tests had been conducted.
Under its contingency plan, in case the number of infected people crosses 30,000, Delhi government will convert hotels and banquet halls into temporary medical wards to accommodate patients.
A week after it put several restrictions to maintain social distancing, Delhi government decided to open Asia’s biggest fruit and vegetable wholesale market in north Delhi’s Azadpur round-the-clock from Tuesday.
The new Covid care centres in Delhi are equipped to handle corona patients in need of moderate medical care.
Government flats and dharamshalas in Delhi have turned into temporary hospitals to accommodate the evergrowing number of Covid-19 patients.

Bengaluru

A day after a team of BBMP doctors and ASHA workers was attacked in Padarayanapura of west Bengaluru, the Karnataka government on Monday said it will promulgate an ordinance to protect police and health workers on Covid-19 duties.
Nudged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help labourers from unorganised sectors hit by the lockdown, the Karnataka government is looking to emulate Haryana’s model where the state has rolled out direct cash transfer scheme for daily-wage workers. The Haryana government has been transferring Rs 1,000 directly to bank accounts of beneficiaries every week.
The state health department has started using recent call data of Covid-19 patients to identify and trace all the people they may have met, officials said. The move was prompted after some patients were unable or reluctant to share this information, which is crucial to check the viral spread.

Mumbai

As many as 53 of 171 mediapersons who had participated in the Covid-19 testing camp for journalists on April 17 have tested positive. The BMC on Monday contacted them and asked them to stay in home quarantine while arrangements were being made to get them quarantined in a hotel in Goregaon.
While industries in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region remained mostly shut on Monday—the first day of relaxation of the lockdown—in the rest of Maharashtra, as many as 1,335 units employing 20,000 workers were granted permission to restart operations following submission of self-declaration forms online.
After two civic staff working in the disaster control room located within the BMC headquarters tested positive for Covid-19, the civic body has partially moved the control room operations to its Parel centre, where a replica of the existing disaster control room was set up in March last year.

Hyderabad

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation council along with religious scholars on Monday appealed to Muslims to conduct prayers at home during the holy month of Ramzan which begins on April 23. GHMC conducted a meeting with the religious leaders to discuss measures to be adopted during the holy month.
Desperate as they are during the ongoing lockdown, migrant workers, hostellers and students are trying out new modes of transport to cross the state borders. After trying their luck with cargo vans and container trucks, they are now going for boats and milk vans to cross into the other side.
To ensure that people stay within 3 km of their houses when they step out for essentials, everyone across Telangana would henceforth be required to carry proof of residence, DGP M Mahender Reddy said on Monday.

Kolkata

Safety concerns and doubts over the security of Zoom app for online classes have forced several Kolkata schools to shift their virtual classrooms to other platforms like Google Hangout, Google Meet, Skype or Adobe Connect.
The first day of partial relaxation of the ongoing lockdown on Monday saw a slight increase in vehicles on the roads in Kolkata.
A slum off EM Bypass that hit the novel coronavirus spotlight nearly a week before Kolkata and the rest of India went into lockdown mode was sealed off by combat forces on Monday after at least three persons developed symptoms that resemble cases of Covid-19 infection.
Two central teams landed in Kolkata and Bagdogra and visited select areas on Monday for an on-the-spot assessment of West Bengal’s lockdown and social-distancing enforcement, prompting CM Mamata Banerjee to shoot off a letter to PM Narendra Modi and protest against the serious “breach of established protocol” for “keeping the state government in the dark” about the visit.

Lucknow

Personnel of the Police Commissionerate Lucknow will be doing 8-hour duty from Tuesday, according to an order issued by Lucknow Police Commissioner Sujit Pandey.
Residents of several apartment blocks and colonies developed and managed by Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) are a harassed lot these days. Spraying of disinfectant and fogging as well as maintenance work is not being done regularly by authorities since the lockdown began.

Ahmedabad

When around 25 cops of city police have already tested Covid-19 positive, many of them who remain untested in want of proper guidance by health officials may be carrying it.
Of the 1,248 Covid-19 cases detected in Ahmedabad, more than 70% showed no classic Covid-19 symptoms and were asymptomatic. This has become a matter of worry for municipal health officials.
With over 25 police personnel infected by Covid-19, the city police commissioner, Ashish Bhatia, has instructed policemen to avoid human contact and not to make spot arrests of any accused from affected areas except in serious offences.

Chennai

A team of doctors and engineers in Tamil Nadu has developed a bluetooth-enabled fever thermometer to get the details like temperature and location of patients to map fever clusters. It would help targeted testing with existing test kits and identify hotspots with the help of an app.
The Greater Chennai Corporation has asked NGOs and other individuals to refrain from distributing food within a 2km radius of containment zones, government hospitals and private hospitals authorised to treat novel coronavirus patients, the civic body’s health centres and sample testing centres which are considered hot spots.
As many as 736 cases were registered in the last 24 hours for violating prohibitory orders under Section 144 of CrPC, police said. About 451 vehicles, including 393 two-wheelers, were seized.

Chandigarh

The Punjab health department has not been able to trace the transmission history of about 16% Covid-19 cases.
After Sector 40, the resident welfare associations (RWAs) of other sectors of Chandigarh have also planned to check the entry and exit points of their sectors. The RWAs have planned to seal the entry and exit points to avoid the spread of Covid-19 infection.