Day after being Corona free, Bhubaneswar records two fresh cases

BHUBANESWAR: A day after the state capital was relieved of active Covid cases with discharge of three from the hospital, two positive cases here were reported on Tuesday taking the total here to 52.
The new cases have surfaced after 12 days as last time the city reported any case was on May 7, when three persons of three different localities had tested Covid positive.While the latest cases came on the second day of fourth phase lockdown, the previous three cases had been reported just three days into the third phase lockdown.
“We have two positive cases, one a police constable, reported from two different localities of the city. Contact tracing is being done to ascertain the source of infection,” said Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) commissioner Prem Chandra Chaudhury.
He said Bhubaneswar continues to be the red zone. “The new cases are isolated ones in two localities. We will not create containment zone around the area as had been done earlier in three localities because multiple cases had surfaced from several families scattered over a locality. In this case, we don’t cluster containment,” added the commissioner.
The BMC officials said instead of containment zone, it will go for home quarantine for at least 40 families living in the vicinity of affected person. “During home quarantine, active surveillance will keep on going. The surveillance squad will record health update of the quarantined people and samples will also be collected for Covid test,” said a BMC officer.
Despite two new cases being reported, the BMC, which brought out the guidelines for the city to be implemented during the lockdown, didn’t introduce more restrictions. It rather has allowed operation of auto rickshaws, eateries for packing of food, opening of markets- vegetable, fish, meat- at the allotted places and barber shops and salon, which was restricted during lockdown 3.0. BMC officials said there may be a few changes to norms brought out on Tuesday after complete contact tracing of the two positive persons.
Two Air India flights carrying stranded people from Dubai and Kuala Lumpur will arrive here at Biju Patnaik International Airport on Wednesday night. The first international flight carrying stranded Odias from Dubai had landed here on May 14.