Thiruvananthapuram’s coastal areas go under lockdown to curb Covid-19 community transmission

The Thiruvananthapuram District Collector said the decision the decision to designate coastal areas into three critical containment zones was taken in view of community spread of Covid-19 in those areas.

A day after Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said community transmission of Covid-19 was detected in Thiruvananthapuram, the government on Saturday slapped a 10-day complete lockdown in three critical containment zones in the district’s coastal areas.

Vizhinjam, in Thiruvananthapuram is one of the coastal areas that has ben placed under complete lockdown. (HT PHOTO)

Thiruvananthapuram District Collector Navjot Khosa said the decision the decision to designate coastal areas into three critical containment zones was taken in view of community spread of Covid-19 in those areas of the district.

“The zones will be kept under complete lockdown from 12 midnight of July 18 to midnight of July 28. The existing lockdown relaxations shall not be applied and strict lockdown measures shall be in force for a period of 10 days in these areas,” the District Collector’s said in her order.

Earlier in the day, Kerala health minister KK Shailaja said that the rate of community transmission in Covid-19 clusters in the state is more than 50%.

Shailaja said the government was turning its focus on coastal areas to break the chain of transmission of the disease.

“We are trying to break the chain of transmission from one cluster to another. We are thoroughly locking the clusters. We need to give more attention to coastal areas,” she said.

On Saturday, Kerala reported 593 new Covid-19 cases and two deaths taking the tally to 11,659 out of which 6,416 are active cases.

Thiruvananthapuram reported 173 of the new cases, Vijayan said.

Covid-19 cases in Kerala have been on the rise since the first week of May when expatriates and people working in other states began returning home.

Kerala which was the first state to report Covid-19 in India in January had almost flattened the curve in the first week of May when it had brought down the number of active cases to less than one hundred.