Odisha's Nuapada district infection count dips, moves to green zone

BHUBANESWAR: The Nuapada district, which until two weeks ago was a major worry for the government owing to its high infection count, on Monday moved to the green zone with just 490 active cases. As a result, the government has now allowed the markets in the district to remain open till 1 pm instead of the earlier 11 am.
On May 17, the number of active cases in the district was more than 2,000. Every day after that the district reported over 100 cases daily till May 22. On Monday, it saw 53 new cases. It had touched a single-day peak of 700 cases in the first week of May.
"Before the government decided to impose the lockdown from May 5, we had three urban centres - Khariar, Khariar Road and Nuapada - in almost lockdown mode with traders self-regulating themselves keeping the shop open for a few hours. We also streamlined the testing from the very beginning of the second wave. We started testing 1,000 samples when many bigger districts were not doing so. This helped us isolate the infected people," Swadha Dev Singh, district collector, Nuapada said.
The biggest challenge that the district machinery faced was to access the villages and test the tribals. "We went to the panchayats where Chakutia Bhunjia community lives. We conducted their tests. Some of those returned positive. We isolated them and and provided them with the available treatment," he added. Though it is a smaller district compared to its neighbours, Balangir and Kalahandi, its disadvantage is it its proximity to Chhattisgarh capital Raipur, where cases were exploding in March and April. That had a direct bearing on Nuapada. The district accumulated more than 15,000 cases in the second wave with the total count touching 21,990. The district's Covid fatality touched 56 with one more death on Monday.