Surat authorities put part of Rander area under mass quarantine

Over 50,000 people told to stay under quarantine.




The Surat Municipal Corporation on Wednesday put a portion of Rander area under mass quarantine after two persons in the locality had tested positive for coronavirus a few days ago.

The SMC authorities had carried out a door-to-door survey in Rander since the last few days. A total of 16,785 houses had been covered out of which 54,003 people had been put under mass quarantine.

In the area, which is spread across 1.25 square kilometres, a total of 55 teams had been deployed for door-to-door surveillance, and the entire area has been barricaded with red flags, and signages had been installed to restrict the movement of people and even prevent the entry of outsiders.

Surat Municipal commissioner Banchhanidhi Pani said that in these areas 12 hospitals, 23 mosques, 22 main roads, and 82 internal roads and 969 public places had been sanitized by the fire department officials who worked round-the-clock for three days.

“This is for the first time we are implementing HCM strategy. The SMC was doing home quarantine, centralized quarantine. Now we have added mass quarantine in the strategy in Rander area.” he said.

Deputy Health Commissioner Dr Ashish Naik said, “The reason for mass quarantine was that we have found two positive cases within 550 metre radius. We have also got information of travel history of around 70 people who had been earlier advised for home quarantine. The second positive case was of an elderly person who was not having any travel history or any contact history, and we have found that through community gathering he was infected.”

Sources in the civic body said that with the help of 192 NGO’s a total of 2.73 lakh food packets had been distributed across the city. The SMC officials had also opened a bank account and appealed for donations. Till Wednesday, they have received Rs 1.76 crore as donation.

The municipal commissioner further said, “We have planned to set up 220 new isolation wards in SMIMER hospital and among them 150 isolation wards are ready. We have also planned to use the area of multilevel parking of SMIMER hospital, wherein 220 isolation wards will be set up on the first and second floors.”

Meanwhile, the health department of the SMC found one suspected case of an employee working at DMart mall at Pandesara. The SMC officials had identified 1,493 customers who visited the mall in the last few days. They have been contacted through messaging system and have been requested to stay under home quarantine.

? The Indian Express is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@indianexpress) and stay updated with the latest headlines

For all the latest Cities News, download Indian Express App.

Source: Read Full Article