Ganjam district slips from orange to red zone after spike in Covid-19 cases

BHUBANESWAR/BERHAMPUR: With the spurt in Covid-19 cases in Ganjam district, the state government on Thursday designated it as a red zone. The government also named Jagatsinghpur and Mayurbhanj as orange zones.
While Ganjam was in the orange zone in the classification last done on Sunday, the other two were in the green. Ganjam was placed in the red category because of its very high doubling rate, a health department official said.
Ganjam has reported 28 positive cases, including 24 on Thursday, and all in the past less than a week since it reported its first case on May 3.
All those who have tested positive for the virus had returned from Surat. Fifteen trains and more than 200 buses had brought migrants, from Surat and Kerala, to Ganjam.
While 13 trains had come from the red zone district of Surat in Gujarat, two came from Kerala. Of the 35,000 migrant workers who have returned to Odisha in the past one week, about 25,000 have entered Ganjam alone. The district now has the second highest number of active cases (28) after Jajpur (54).
Mayurbhanj and Jagatsinghpur reported four cases each. While the coronavirus positive persons from Mayurbhanj had also returned from Surat, the four from Jagatsinghpur had come back from West Bengal, the government authorities said.
“The Ganjam district administration has set up more than 700 quarantine centres in 503 panchayats in the district to keep the migrants in isolation. All the positive patients were admitted in the Covid-19 care hospital at Sitalapalli. Except three of them, all others are asymptomatic,” Uma Shankar Mishra, superintendent of the Covid-19 hospital, said.
The Ganjam administration has asked people not to go near the institutional quarantine centres in the district. Only the authorized persons are allowed to go to the centres.
“Stringent action will be taken against the persons who are found visiting the quarantine centres without authorization,” district collector (Ganjam) Vijay Amruta Kulange said.
The Berhampur Municipal Corporation (BeMC) authorities on Thursday made institutional quarantine mandatory for those returning from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Kerala. The BeMC has set up 27 institutional quarantine centres.