The Odisha government on Monday said all temporary medical centres (TMCs), COVID-19 care centres and hospitals will be treated as containment zones apart from those that would be declared in the aftermath of detection of new cases.
Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy told presspersons that the boundary area of the zones will be decided by the local authorities and administered through the Panchayati Raj institutions during the fourth phase of lockdown till May 31.
Mr. Tripathy said the panchayats will be treated as administrative units for deciding the area of panchayats or cluster of panchayats as red, green or orange zones. No other items except food and medicines will be allowed inside the zones, he said.
Mr. Tripathy urged the people to continue to use masks and maintain social distancing norms strictly in the coming days to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. This will be more essential as there will be more people outside in future with lifting of restrictions, he said.
Ensuring quarantine of all people returning from other States had helped in containing the virus, Mr. Tripathy said. The same system will continue in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, 48 new COVID-19 positive cases were detected in the districts taking the total to 876. As 57 patients were also discharged from the hospitals during the day, the number of recovered cases is 277. Only four persons have died so fa.
Thanking the Panchayati Raj institutions for the smooth functioning of the TMCs, Mr. Tripathy said 754 of the 876 cases were detected there.
More than 1,76,152 people had returned to the State by Monday and more were to return during the next few weeks, Mr. Tripathy said.