Nuh was among first four districts of the state to be declared a ‘red zone’ but later became the first district to become an ‘orange zone’. Express Photo By Amit Mehra. (Representational)
In less than a month, the number of active coronavirus cases in Nuh — considered Haryana’s most backward district — has gone down from 57 to 5.
Nuh was among first four districts of the state to be declared a ‘red zone’ but later became the first district to become an ‘orange zone’. At one stage in April, Nuh had topped the list of districts with the highest number of coronavirus cases — 55.
Officials say that “after the national capital, Nuh had the highest number of Tablighi Jamat members, who had attended the congregation at Nizamuddin in Delhi”, contributing to maximum cases in Nuh.
However, now 60 of Nuh’s 65 patients have recovered or have been discharged from hospitals. No death has been reported from the district. “Our coordinated strategy has worked well, which did not allow its spread in the communities,” said IAS officer Chander Shekhar, who was specially sent to Nuh from Chandigarh to monitor the efforts to control the spread of Covid-19 in the district.
“The government focused on it a lot as the district emerged as a red zone at an early stage. There was no dearth of PPE kits, masks, gloves and medicines. We did not want to let the situation out of hands in Mewat area,” Chander Shekhar told The Indian Express.
“After Delhi, our district had maximum Tablighis, more than 700. As many as 45 of the corona cases were only from Tablighis or their contacts,” said Nuh’s Chief Medical Officer Dr Virender Yadav.
“If anybody tested positive, our teams took their contacts to the medical college for sampling within an hour. They were put in isolation as we used to prepare tentative lists of the contacts of every suspected case in advance. We had declared 45 villages as containment zones when 57 persons tested positive from the district to restrict movement of people. No other district of the state has declared so many containment zones even till now,” said Yadav, adding,
“When as many as eight cases were reported from Khanpur Ghati, we condoned off the entire village which has a population of 3,000, for 28 days.”
The CMO said that they did not allow any retail sale from vegetable markets, adding that grain markets were also not opened for procurement of crops.
The officials are happy that the villagers too helped them in containing the spread. “The village sarpanch did not allow anybody to enter the village before screening by health authorities. Even after screening, anybody who came from other districts or states were quarantined for minimum 14 days but if any symptoms were noticed then the person concerned was quarantined for 28 days,” said officials. According to Chander Shekhar, people performed religious practices at home. “When a person came from Mumbai, they immediately alerted us,” added the officer.
‘Door-to-door survey of 2.3 lakh households in 7 days’
Health authorities say they conducted door-to-door survey of 2.35 lakh households to cover 14.5 lakh population of the district with the help of 289 teams within seven days.
“Out of 503 villages, a second round of survey was conducted in over 200 villages to halt spread of the coronavirus,” says the CMO. Till now, as many as 4,300 samples have been taken from the district.
State Health Services Director General Dr Suraj Bhan Kamboj said, “No new cases are being reported from Nuh district while most of the others have recovered. This is good situation for us.”