Lockdown as 5 new coronavirus cases in Bhilwara, 11 in 2 days

A TEAM FROM THE NATIONAL CENTRE FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND OTHER HEALTH DEPT TEAMS ARE CARRYING OUT CONTACT TRACING

nJAIPUR: Bhilwara was in a lockdown on Saturday as 300 teams of health workers descended on the city and carried out an intensive screening drive in the face of concerns of community transmission of the coronavirus disease. Five new coronavirus cases were reported in the Rajasthan city -- all of them work at a wellattended city hospital in which a doctor tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday.

Rohit Kumar Singh, additional chief secretary, health, said the five new cases are all staff members of Brijesh Bangar hospital, a private hospital, where a doctor who worked there tested positive on Friday. Of the five new cases, two are doctors and three are compounders.

Of them, two doctors have been admitted to the SMS hospital in Jaipur, while a doctor and the three compounders were admitted to the district hospital in Bhilwara.

According to Dr KK Sharma, director, public health, a list of around 5000 out-patient department patients at the Bangar Brijesh hospital has been prepared and Rapid Response Teams were screening them.

The five new cases comes a day after six coronavirus cases were reported from Bhilwara, sparking fears of community transmission, a phase in which people with no recent history of foreign travel or known contact with a coronavirus patient test positive for the disease.

A team from the National Centre for Disease Control and other teams from the health department are carrying out contact tracing and trying to identify the source, said collector Rajendra Bhatt.

“The main concern is to prevent community spread of the virus and hundreds of health teams are working on a war footing to control the situation,” said Bhatt.

Dr Mustaq Khan, chief medical and health officer of Bhilwara, said the health department was trying to trace the source of the virus in the Bhilwara outbreak. “We have 11 cases but we don’t know the source. We are screening the family members and relatives and others whom these people were in contact with,” he said.

Teams of ANMS (Auxiliary Nurse, Midwifes), accredited social health activists and anganwadi workers carried out door to door surveys and had screened 125,000 people in 25,000 houses in urban and rural areas of the district by Saturday night.

Sharma said the private hospital has been sanitised and the 223 staff and 55 admitted patients had been screened.

All public places such as hospitals, railway station, bus stands, and religious sites have been sanitised.

On Friday itself, the district authorities clamped down a curfew on Bhilwara, sealing its borders neighbouring other districts. On Saturday, streets wore a deserted look, as markets, shops, malls, banks and religious places remained shut. Hundreds of police personnel were deployed across the city and all public and private transport was off the roads. The administration informed people that they would only be allowed out between 7 to 10 am and 5 to 7 pm.

The total number of cases in Rajasthan now stands at 23. Until now, the coronavirus cases reported in Rajasthan have been either foreigners or those who had returned from abroad. The state government on Saturday declared a lockdown until March 31. All government as well as private offices, malls, shops, factories and public transport are expected to remain closed.