Capital city becomes corona-free

Bhubaneswar: The capital city, which was placed in the red zone by the Centre for a spurt in Covid-19 cases in March and April, achieved the feat of having zero active coronavirus cases on Monday.
The city has recorded 50 positive cases and two deaths. The last three Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital on Monday.
Prem Chandra Chaudhury, commissioner, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), attributed the success to active surveillance, monitoring, health mapping at the household level and aggressive testing, besides strict enforcement of social distancing.
“We don’t have any active cases now but that doesn’t mean we can become complacent. There may be a few cases again as people from outside the state return. Hence, our next course of action will be aggressive community sensitization,” he told TOI.
He further said the BMC has not only created a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for people currently under home quarantine here, but also for their neighbours. “We will redraw zones for the fourth phase of the lockdown. The markets — vegetables, fish and meat — will continue to run from their new locations,” the commissioner added.
The localities that reported the last three cases around 10 days ago — Mancheswar, VSS Nagar and Surya Nagar — have also not been designated as containment zones. The BMC had earlier removed containment tag from three areas, Satyanagar, Bomikhal and Suryanagar, for not reporting any case for two weeks.
Bhubaneswar reported its first case on March 15 and then kept adding to the count. The highest single-day jump was 18 cases on April 5, followed by 10 on April 3. The last three cases in the city were reported on May 7. The state government continued to keep the city under the red category during the third phase of the lockdown as there were 15 active cases.
Altogether, thirteen localities here have reported cases — Bomikhal, Suryanagar, Jharpada, Satyanagar, Unit-IV, Unit-V , BJB Nagar, Badagad, Saheed Nagar, Kapila Prasad, Mancheswar, VSS Nagar and Gymkhana Palm Heights. Suryanagar was the first to become a containment zone, followed by Bomikhal, which recorded 18 cases.