Fears of community spread in Ganjam as COVID-19 cases rise

BERHAMPUR: Amid the continuous rise in Covid-19 cases and deaths in Ganjam, fear of community transmission has gripped people even as the district administration remains in denial.Ganjam has reported a high number of daily Covid-19 cases since the last fortnight. Though the administration has initiated a host of measures including shutdown and lockdown to contain the virus, all efforts have failed to bring down the case load.

If one goes by the official statistics, community transmission has already started in Ganjam. Of the more than 3,000 positive cases reported in the district in the last fortnight, at least 98 per cent are local contacts of migrant workers who returned from other states. However, the administration terms these cases as ‘active contacts’ and denies any community spread.

During May and mid-June, most of the positive cases were reported from quarantine centres. But since then, majority of the new Covid-19 cases were detected from outside the quarantine centres. “If it was not community transmission, the numbers would not have been so high in Ganjam,” said social worker and senior advocate Jyoti Prasad Chhotray.

The virus spread can only be contained by adhering to the social distancing norm. But the markets still remain crowded with no administrative or police officer to check the violation. Now barricades are being erected in front of shops and outlets since the last two days. Had the administration taken the step earlier, the spike in cases could have been checked, Chhotray added.

Health experts believed that cases will continue to rise for some more days and urged the administration to strictly enforce social distancing in marketplaces. They said community transmission was inevitable since migrant workers mingled with their family and neighbours without any check.

Besides, the delay in publication of test reports of suspected persons whose swabs were collected also led to the virus spread. The experts said such persons should have been made to stay in isolation till their reports were out but it was not done properly.

Meanwhile, Ganjam reported another 239 positive cases and five deaths in the last 24 hours. All the five victims are male in the age group of 40-70 years. They were also suffering from diabetes and hypertension.

The district has so far reported 5,766 Covid-19 cases of which 3,871 have recovered. The Covid-19 death toll in Ganjam stands at 59.