To drop red zone tag, Bhubaneswar begins collecting 5000 samples for Covid-19 tests

Keen to get Bhubaneswar out of the Red Zone by April 20, the Odisha government on Friday announced that 5000 samples would be collected from the Covid-19 hotspots of Bhubaneswar beginning today.

Chief secretary Asit Tripathy said the 5000 samples would be collected from people with vulnerabilities to Covid-19 in an intensive drive to find out the exact spread of the virus in the Odisha capital with 1-million plus population.

So far, Bhubaneswar has accounted for 46 of the 60 positive cases in Odisha resulting in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare tagging Khurda district among the 170 Covid-19 hotspot districts.

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Tripathy said the testing of 5000 samples in Bhubaneswar may be one of the biggest in terms of samples per million population if compared to cities like Mumbai, Chennai and Pune. “We are trying to bring all available RT-PCR machines in the state to Bhubaneswar and increase the testing capacities of all the 6 Covid-19 laboratories in the state including 3 in Bhubaneswar. The testing will be ramped up several times over,” he said.

Officials said the testing in campaign mode is in line with PM Modi’s provision of easing restrictions in areas with no Covid-19 cases from April 20. Of the 7577 samples tested in Odisha so far, Bhubaneswar alone has accounted for 1958 samples, around 38 per cent of the total samples. With 46 cases, Bhubaneswar’s positive to samples tested ratio is 2.4 per cent.

Odisha has been posting encouraging results since the last 2 days with 1940 samples collected from different parts of the state testing negative. Of the 60 positive cases, 19 have been discharged.

The samples to be collected through static and mobile camps would be taken by technicians wearing PPEs on a four-tier priority basis from people based on the risk level. The top priority groups would be people with SARI (Severe Acute Respiratory Illness) and healthcare workers deployed at Covid-19 hotspots. Police personnel, sanitation workers and other Covid-19 workers belong to the second tier. The third priority category has senior citizens with co-morbidity conditions like diabetes and hypertension and some samples will be collected at random.

“We are seeing that people in the priority group are reluctant to give samples. If anyone in Bhubaneswar is in the priority list, then they should come to camps voluntarily. Or else we may have to use force,” the chief secretary said, appealing to all RWAs and puja committee members to help in the sample collection. To carry out the increased testing, Bhubaneswar has been divided into three zones in which senior officers would be put as Covid-19 observers.

The government also announced that spitting in public places would now be a compoundable offence and violators will be penalized. “While a Rs 200 fine will be collected from each violator in the first 3 times thereafter the violator will be slapped with a Rs 500 fine. The block extension officer, additional tehsildar, ASI police and municipality ward officer will be assigned to enforce the rule,” he said.

In another move, officials said the Centre is planning to collect random samples from a population of 10,000 in all districts unaffected by Covid-19 to get an epidemiological estimate of the spread of the disease and ways to prevent it.