Coronavirus lockdown: How Maharashtra's Wardha has managed to remain in green zone, despite being surrounded by affected districts

Even as Maharashtra has reported the most number of coronavirus cases in the country, one of its districts, Wardha, has managed to remain free from the virus despite being surrounded by districts with high number of COVID-19 cases.

According to the district's collector Vivek Bhimanwar, who spoke to The Indian Express, this was because of the initiatives taken by the administration, including strict vigil at four goods unloading points in the region and deployment of youth squads in over 65 villages.

"We are surrounded by three highlyaffected districts — Nagpur, Yavatmal and Amravati. So, we needed to be extra cautious," Bhimanwar said.

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"We started off our campaign as early as February when we quarantined 13 girls from Beijing, who had joined the Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya. At that time, there was no talk of lockdown in the country," the official said.

Bhimanwar added that in mid-March, the administration shifted 54 major crowding vegetable markets to large open places in order to prevent crowding. They also stopped the entry of vegetables from outside the district.

A major challenge was to ensure that entry into the district was sealed.

"We knew it would be impossible to deploy police at all the points. So, we roped in staff from other departments to form vigilance squads along with 65 squads of local youths led by sarpanchs of villages near the entry points of the district," Bhimanwar said, adding, however, that the most effective method was to establish four good unloading points at district borders.

"We allowed transport vehicles carrying essential goods only by four routes and created unloading points at the entry points of district," the collector said, adding that drivers and cleaners of such vehicles were shifted to a separate facility and were not allowed to enter the cities.

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"The vehicles are also disinfected and goods are unloaded by local labourers and carried to markets in separate vehicles," Bhimanwar said.

"We have put 114 foreign travellers and 19,600 outside travelers under home quarantine. A total of 300 samples were sent for testing, of which, 291 have reported negative and nine reports are awaited," the official added.