Surat headache for Ganjam as 4 from Guj textile city test positive

Berhampur: Surat has become a cause of serious concern for the state government with all four Covid-19 positive cases from Ganjam till Wednesday being the migrant workers, who returned from the textile town of Gujarat. Officials said the last one to have tested positive for the virus is an 18-year-old youth.
Worried about the sudden spurt of the positive cases in the district, the government has deputed a two-member team of health officials to supervise the surveillance and containment measures. The team members are director of family welfare Bijay Kumar Panigrahy and scientist of the Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC) in Bhubaneswar, Jaysingh Khatri.
Ganjam, which maintained the green zone status till May 2, entered into the orange zone after two Odia workers from Surat became the first ones to have tested positive for the disease in the district. In the last four days, the number of Covid-19 patients in the district has gone up to four.
All the four patients were, however, put up in institutional quarantine centres in different places before their swab samples were tested, following which their travel history was released. The affected persons belong to Kokolanda (Belaguntha), Tamanada (Jagannath Prasad) and Sriram Nagar (Buguda). Sources said the administration is trying to trace all those they came in contact with.
The district has seen an influx of thousands of migrant labourers daily from hotspot states like Gujarat, Kerala and Karnataka by buses and trains. While over 20,000 labourers have already reached the district, about 3,300 are expected to arrive in three trains from Surat on Wednesday.
“With all the four positive cases in the district being related to Surat and more migrant workers from the Gujarat city heading towards the district, we are worried,” a senior officer said. He, however, added that the district administration has taken containment measures to arrest the spread of the disease.
The official said this apart, a rapid response team consisting of the professors of pulmonary medicine, anesthesiology, microbiology and community medicine of MKCG Medical College and Hospital here, has been formed to strengthen surveillance, contact tracing, testing as well as the medicine preparedness.