Of late, Bhubaneswar is seeing a sharp increase of coronavirus cases, particularly local contacts. On Monday, out of the 28 positive cases reported from Khordha district, 25 belonged to the capital city.

Of the 25 cases, 23 were local contacts and two from home quarantine, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) said.

The home quarantine cases included an employee of a private hospital with a travel history to Kolkata and a male staff of Railways with travel history to New Delhi.

The local contact cases included five men of Mancheswar near ‘Pratidin’ office linked with an earlier positive case, two cases of the same family of Samantrapur. One of them is a service provider in a quarantine centre.

Four cases, all men of Chakeisiani near the Manchenath High School, are linked with an earlier positive case.

Four more cases included a woman of Baltotasahi near the Passport Office, linked with an earlier positive case, two cases including a woman of Chakeisiani Hadabai Basti, a case of a woman of Siripur’s Laxmi Basti, an woman employee of a private hospital, linked with an earlier positive case, a woman of Nialadri Vihar who travelled from another district, a man of Ashok Nagar, a male employee of a Government hospital and a woman of Nayalpalli near the M3 Park.

With the new cases, the total tally in the city rose to 314, of which 135 are active cases. Four patients have succumbed to the virus in the city so far.

Seven patients recovered in the city, taking the total recovered cases to 174.

Meanwhile, as there has been a spurt in the cases especially in slum areas, the BMC on Monday issued new guidelines for private hospitals and nursing homes asking them to provide accommodation to their health workers and staffs.

The BMC said many healthcare staffs in private hospitals and nursing homes who usually reside in slum areas have been detected positive. “Frequent movements of hospital staffs to slum areas, therefore, pose risk of spread of the virus quickly,” the guidelines said.

“The employees residing in the slum areas need to be kept in shift for 14 days and the hospital authorities will make accommodation arrangement of those slum dweller employees within the hospital premises,” the guidelines said.

After the 14-day shift, the set of employees would be relieved of their duties after their Covid testing and negative report. The next set of employees would then be given duties and the same procedure would be adopted if the next set of employees also belongs to slum areas.

All the private hospitals/nursing homes were asked to nominate a responsible officer of their organisation as nodal officer.