Coronavirus: Village in Bihar’s Siwan declared hot spot after 19 fresh cases

Covid-19 in Bihar: A hard lockdown in containment zones mandates people to stay indoors and leads to closure of all businesses, including grocery stores and banks otherwise exempted from curbs as essential services.

The Bihar government Friday imposed a hard lockdown in a village after it emerged as a Covid-19 hot spot in Siwan district that accounts for 29 of the state’s total 60 cases. As many as 19 cases in the district have been reported since Thursday.

People buy facemasks on day seventeen of the 21 day nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus, at Govind Mitra road, in Patna, Bihar, India, on Friday. (Photo by Santosh Kumar / Hindustan Times)

A hard lockdown in containment zones mandates people to stay indoors and leads to closure of all businesses, including grocery stores and banks otherwise exempted from curbs as essential services. Critical services such as food and medicine are home-delivered to people in containment zones

“Within the 3-km containment zone of Panjwar village, barricades have been set up at a distance of 200 m, 500 m, 1 km, 2 km and 3 km to ensure that people stay indoors,” said health secretary Lokesh Kumar Singh. “We are doing active surveillance and also undertaking an intensive disinfection drive by spraying sodium hypochlorite in the affected village,” Singh added.

Bihar chief secretary Deepak Kumar on Friday directed top officials to camp in Siwan to enforce the complete lockdown in Panjwar. District authorities have also deployed drones for surveillance in Panjwar and pressed National Disaster Response Forc personnel into service .

Two people tested positive on Friday belonged to the same family of the village, where a 33-year-old had returned from Oman on March 21, said Bihar’s principal secretary (health) Sanjay Kumar. The super-spreader tested positive on April 3 and is believed to have infected six immediate family members, besides 21 of his extended family and two co-travellers, said heath officials.