As many as 19 new coronavirus infections were registered in the capital city Bhubaneswar on Saturday. Out of the 19, four are home quarantine and 15 are local contact cases, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) said. The four home quarantine cases are railway staffs and include a 43-year-old man, a 55-year-old, a man 44-year-old man and a 32-year-old man.

Among the 15 local cases, eight are employees of two private hospitals in the city linked with earlier positive cases, who are natives of other districts.

Five cases, all men, belong to the Subash Nagar slum of Dumduma and are linked with an earlier case with travel history to New Delhi. One case is a 51-year-old employee of a Government hospital in Bhubaneswar and another person is a nine-year-old boy of Laxmi Bazar Basti who is a native of another district having recently come to Bhubaneswar.

The BMC on Saturday declared Subhash Nagar in Dumduma as a ‘containment zone’. BMC Commissioner Prem Chand Chaudhary said, “As the Subhash Nagar slum is a densely-populated area with nearly 300 households, it has been declared a containment zone.”

“Active surveillance and contact tracing activities will be undertaken for the next seven days. All the positive cases are asymptomatic cases. If no positive case is detected during active surveillance, necessary steps will be further taken to extend or de-contain the area,” Chaudhary added.

BMC officials said no public would be allowed to move into the containment zone and the inhabitants within the containment zone shall not move out.

Supply of essential commodities would be ensured through various teams formed by the BMC. All Government and private institutions located within the boundary of the containment zone would remain closed, said the BMC.