Public transport suspended across Srinagar
■ 67-year-old woman tests positive after returning from Mecca pilgrimage, her neighbourhood sealed
Several areas in Srinagar and the towns of Budgam and Pulwama witnessed a lockdown on Thursday after reinforcements from Jammu and Kashmir police and Central paramilitary forces fanned out in the early hours to erect barricades and lay Concertina razor wires on roads to restrict the movement of residents.
This came after a 67year-old woman resident of Srinagar’s Khanyar area was tested positive for Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), the Valley’s first such case. She had returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca earlier this week and has been put in isolation.
While surveillance had started in the 300-metre radius of her residence on Wednesday night itself, the authorities decided to impose restrictions in various other parts of J&K’s summer capital, including Khanyar, from Thursday morning. Also, public transport services were suspended and public gatherings banned across the city and in the towns of Budgam and Pulwama and their neighbourhoods “as a precautionary measure to prevent the spread of deadly virus”.
Twenty-one medical teams comprising doctors and paramedics conducted house-to-house inspections and collected data in and around the area where the infected person resides.
The Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) teams performed sanitisation of the entire area in order to disinfect it, the officials said.
Srinagar’s DC Shahid Iqbal Choudhary said that the exercise was conducted based on the global standard operating procedure in this matter. “The aim was to contain spread of the infection,” he added.
Mr. Choudhary urged all residents and relatives of the woman who might have come in contact with her after her return from Saudi Arabia to report to their nearest health facilities or inform the authorities through a 24x7 helpline set up for the purpose.
“This is urgent and cannot be ignored,” the officer said. The officials said that the passengers who flew in with this woman are also being contacted for their medical examination.
Restrictions under Section 144 CrPC were imposed also in several parts of the Valley and also Jammu region whereas the authorities have taken tougher measures in Ladakh’s main town Leh, its neighbourhood and Kargil district to reduce the COVID-19 threat.
Elsewhere in the Valley and parts of Jammu, people were amid heightening tension seen making panic buying to stockpile mainly food and other essential commodities, gasoline and over-thecounter medicines.
The official sources said that curfew-like restrictions will be enforced across the Valley on Friday, mainly to discourage people from converging in mosques and other places of worship for weekly congregational prayers although several religious organisations have either announced cancellation of such gatherings or called for restricting Friday prayers to brief sermons in Arabic and two fard (obligatory) rakats of namaz. They have also asked the worshippers to leave the mosques immediately after these rituals and offer customary sunah and nawafil prayers at home instead.
Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh have, so far, reported twelve cases of COVID-19 including 8 in Leh, three in Jammu and one in the Valley. Among those who have contracted the infection is a 34year-old soldier of Ladakh Scouts, an infantry regiment of the Army nicknamed the “Snow Warriors” or “Snow Tigers”.
— H.U. NAQASH