E-Paper
Covid-19: Home quarantine for Odisha’s urban asymptomatic, mild symptoms patients
A state official said that a person in urban area who tests positive for Covid-19 but has no symptoms or mild symptoms can stay in home quarantine for 14 days if all facilities as prescribed are available at home.
The Odisha government on Monday said that those living in urban areas who test positive for coronavirus disease Covid-19 but are asymptomatic or with mild symptoms can stay in home quarantine instead of institutional quarantine as per central guidelines. The government’s decision has come in the wake of a surge in the number of cases in the state which have doubled in just one week.
Additional chief secretary of health department PK Mohapatra said a person in urban area who tests positive but has no symptoms or mild symptoms can stay in home quarantine for 14 days if all facilities as prescribed are available at home. Before being allowed to stay in home quarantine, the person will be stamped on the hand and a band will be tied on his wrist. A quarantine sticker will also be pasted at his house. Children less than 5 years old, pregnant women and divyangs or differently abled will be tested on priority, he added.
Odisha has seen a steep rise in coronavirus infections in the last 16 days as the number of positive cases jumped to 414 on Monday as per the state government’s data, up from 103 on April 25, mostly due to the influx of migrants from Surat and Bengal, two Covid hotspots. Of the total positive cases in the state, more than 300 are Surat and Bengal returnees.
Officials said the decision to put the Covid positive patients in urban areas in home quarantine was also driven by the reality that the number of hospital beds in the state may not be adequate in the coming days.
Odisha has about 5,500 beds and 293 ICU beds in different Covid hospitals. However, health department officials estimate the requirement to be more than that as the number of positive cases are expected to rise in the coming weeks with more than 5 lakh migrant workers likely to return to the state. “Once more symptomatic cases come in, we have to keep beds free for them. We will also need to keep more ICU beds considering a possible spike in people having respiratory issues,” said a health department official.
As the number of positive cases from quarantine centres populated by migrants from Gujarat, Bengal, Karnataka and other states went up, the Naveen Patnaik government has now directed the sarpanches or village heads to remain vigilant and keep an eye on the inmates of the centres. State government’s Covid-19 spokesperson Subroto Bagchi on Monday said an analysis of positive cases reported in the last few days has established that of the 241 positive cases, 229 were detected in returnees staying in quarantine centres in panchayats.
Bagchi said the sarpanches have been asked to inform the government if they find Covid symptoms in any person staying in their quarantine centres so that immediate treatment can be extended to him or her. He added that following the initiative of Ganjam district collector, the government has directed the officials to impart training on Covid-19, its symptoms and remedial measures to those staying in quarantine centres. To keep the inmates of quarantine centres engaged, the Ganjam district administration has drawn up a daily schedule of activities that includes physical exercise, Covid community health work as well as cleaning and plantation work during the 28-day stay.
Meanwhile, four doctors and two attendants of All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Bhubaneswar were sent in mandatory quarantine for 21 days on Monday after a road accident victim from Maharashtra they had treated tested positive for Covid-19. Ten homeguards of a police outpost in Janla under the jurisdiction have also been sent on quarantine for coming in contact with the injured truck driver.
Officials said the 42-year-old truck driver from Mumbai was seriously injured in a road accident last week near Bhubaneswar. He died soon after being admitted to AIIMS. His blood and swab samples tested positive after his death.
