A day after Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced weekend lockdown on Sunday in the state, the chief minister revised his own decision on Monday announcing that urban areas of the state will now be put under the lockdown on both Saturday and Sunday.
The decision comes as the state reported 4,043 fresh cases of infections in last 24 hours including 13 deaths.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that the urban areas will be put under absolute lockdown from 6pm on Friday until 6am on Monday adding that the containment zones in major cities will be discontinued.
“I had never planned for absolute lockdown”, said Chouhan after chairing a meeting of top bureaucrats in Bhopal on Thursday.
On Wednesday, the chief minister while concluding his Swasthya Agraha had announced that only Sunday lockdown will be imposed in urban areas of the state.
Capital Bhopal and Indore continue to be the Covid-19 hotpsots in the state as the state capital in last 24 hours reported 657 fresh cases while commercial capital Indore has reported 898 cases, a new high for Covid19 ravaged city.
Both the cities had an alarmingly high positivity rate of 15 percent each, respectively in the said duration. Overall positivity rate is also around 12 percent for the state, another concerning reason for the health machinery.
Far flung areas like Barwani and Umaria are also reporting over 100 fresh cases daily.
In the midst of an undeclared medical emergency, Indore administration has banned all types of elective or planned surgeries till further orders and only emergency surgeries will be permitted for the time being.
The brisk pace of infection spread could be gauged from the fact that total active cases which were 12,995 on March 26 have doubled up to 26,059 on April 6.
Oxygen supply hindered
Following the sharp rise in fresh cases, several cities including Indore have reported scarcity of Remdesivir injections and oxygen cylinders. Shivraj government has announced to make government procurement of injections and an agreement has been inked with Bhilai (CG) plant for oxygen supply.
Four patients reportedly died at Bundelkhand Medical College (BMC) in Sagar on Wednesday due to dearth in oxygen supply. Sagar Commissioner Mukesh Shukla on issued a statement denying that anyone died due to oxygen scarcity at the BMC. We have oxygen stock of around 200 days, said the officer.
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