Odisha reported 15 new Covid-19 cases, including three who attended the Tablighi Jamaat event in Delhi’s Nizamuddin, on Friday, the largest single-day increase, forcing the state government to clamp 48-hour curfew in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Bhadrak where the patients of the coronavirus disease are from.
One person from Brahmabarada village in Jajpur district, who had attended the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in March, tested positive on Friday. And the other two are from Cuttack and Bhadrak.
Maulana Saad, the head of the Nizamuddin Markaz, had visited Brahmabarada in February for a religious congregation and it was sealed by the local district administration.
Officials said among the 28 people who had attended the religious congregation in Nizamuddin Markaz and returned to Odisha, 25 have tested negative.
Seven others, including the immediate family members and the tenants of a 60-year-old person in Bhubaneswar, and three brothers from an apartment in the city have also contracted the coronavirus disease.
Indicating that Bhubaneswar was emerging as a Covid-19 hotspot, Odisha’s chief secretary Asit Tripathy said the capital city alone has recorded 14 out of the 20 Covid-19 cases in the state so far.
In Surya Nagar area of Bhubaneswar that was sealed off on Thursday following the report of the 60-year-old man testing positive, laboratory tests of the swab samples of seven members of his family including his wife, daughter and tenant also came positive for Covid-19.
In Bomikhal area of Bhubaneswar, the three brothers had gone to the Capital Hospital in the city three days ago with symptoms of the coronavirus disease when their blood samples were taken. Their test reports showed they had contracted Covid-19.
The state government also sealed off Bomikhal area after the brothers tested positive.
In Bhadrak district, where a 29-year-old chef with travel history to Dubai was tested positive on March 28, two people who came in contact with him also tested positive. Besides, the districts of Jajpur and Puri too reported one positive case each.
“As the surveillance purpose seems greatly restricted even during lockdown period, the government deemed it necessary to impose complete shutdown,” said Tripathy, explaining that the new order was more stringent than the national lockdown.
Till Friday, Odisha had tested 1395 samples of which 20 have tested positive. Two have been discharged after they recovered.
“The earlier lockdown restrictions in wake of Covid-19 outbreak by the ministry of home affairs are being revoked and new shutdown regulations implemented by Odisha State Disaster Management Authority will come into force during the period,” said Tripathy.
“No shops except a few medicine shops and petrol pumps will be open. No one can step outside during the shutdown period and anyone found violating curfew rules will be picked up and put in quarantine facility of the government for a period of 14 days. Apart from that, cases will be registered under Epidemics Act,” he said.
During the shutdown, all grocery stores will be closed and those who have to visit hospitals will be only allowed in ambulances.
Officials said the 48-hour timeline would be used for aggressive contact tracing of Covid-19 suspects.
Of the nine positive cases, the first two have recovered and discharged from hospitals. The contact tracing of third and fourth patients revealed that they came in contact with 129 people. The contact tracing of the other Covid-19 patients is still on.
The 48-hour curfew was announced a day after the government revealed the identity of the fifth person from the state who had tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday and sealed off the area where they lived.
What has baffled the experts is how the 60-year-old man with a learning disability living in a posh area of the city with no travel history for the last three months tested positive for Covid-19.
“The man is mentally retarded and for the last three months, he has not gone anywhere except to some local hospitals for treatment. He is diabetic and has other co-morbidity conditions like hypertension when he was admitted to AIIMS Bhubaneswar on March 31 following problems in respiration,” Prem Chandra Chaudhury, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation commissioner, said.
“As there is no other known way of finding out how he contracted the virus, we have issued an appeal to people to inform us and go on home quarantine,” Chaudhury said.
With 15 cases reported on a single day, doctors said they were apprehensive over community transmission in Odisha.
“It seems we are rapidly advancing towards the community transmission phase. To know how many more have been infected, we have to test more. But we are in a Catch-22 situation. We can’t test more than 250 samples a day in three of our government testing labs as there are no rapid testing kits,” said Dr Binod Patro, professor of community medicine in AIIMS Bhubaneswar.
“For positive confirmation, currently we need 6 hours. We don’t have that many testing kits to go for aggressive testing. But we need to do more testing and contain clusters from where more positive cases have been reported,” Patro said.
Meanwhile, one of those who had attended the Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi appealed to all the attendees of the Nizamuddin event to cooperate with the government and
administration to prevent the spread of the highly-infectious virus.
“I appeal to all those, who had returned from the Nizamuddin event in March, to not hide and dial 104 to register and get the test done. It will be helpful for all of us, our family, our state and as well as the country,” Mohd Moquim, one of the attendees said.
“Follow the advice of doctors and the precautions recommended by the administration to fight against the virus together. Believe in Allah and do your share of contribution for the betterment of the state as well as the country,” he said.
Odisha’s first and second Covid-19 patients, a 33-year-old Italy-returned researcher and a 19-year-old man studying in London were discharged in a span of two days after they recovered from the viral infection.
The 33-year-old man, who was admitted to the hospital with coronavirus infection on March 15, tested negative for the disease twice in a span of 24 hours.
His father said he was happy to see his son back home.
