After two close family members of one of the advisors to Lt-Governor GC Murmu tested positive late Sunday night, several senior officers, working closely with him in his office secretariat, have decided to stay away from the corridors of power in Jammu & Kashmir as they isolated themselves as part of the protocol to prevent spread of the coronavirus.
According to official sources, “wife and son of one of the advisors, tested positive on Sunday night and were admitted in the SMVD Narayana Hospital at Kakryal in Katra. “. They had returned from New Delhi and were screened on their arrival in Jammu.
Following their admissions, contact tracing was launched at the highest level and several senior Government officers and their office staff was sent for administrative quarantine after collecting their samples.
The reports claimed, some of the staff members were also screened in the office of Lt- Governor GC Murmu while he himself opted for self quarantine in Raj Bhawan premises.
Meanwhile, a total number of 52 cases of coronavirus were detected in Jammu & Kashmir on Monday. According to official sources, 38 cases were reported from Jammu and 14 from Kashmir division.
Jammu district, reported highest number of 21 cases.
On the other hand, a total number of 170 stranded passengers arrived at Jammu airport and 562 landed directly in Srinagar on day one of the resumption of domestic airline services.
All the passengers were subjected to 100 percent covid-19 testing on their arrival at the airport and sent for administrative quarantine in SRTC buses to different locations.
Meanwhile, following fresh surge in positive cases, three wards of Trikuta Nagar, two villages each in Miransahib, Kanachak and one ward of Gorkha Nagar in Jammu were declared as containment/Red zones by the District Magistrate late Monday afternoon.
On the other hand while addressing a press conference in Jammu, Spokesperson of the Jammu and Kashmir government Rohit Kansal claimed, with the testing rate of over 10,000 per million Jammu and Kashmir has now become number one in country in testing.
He said, the testing capacity in the UT has gone up from just about 100 tests/day in March to 8000 tests/day on Monday. “In the last one month alone it has gone up from 1800 tests/day to 8100/day – an increase of 350%”, he added.
Sharing details of Covid-19 cases in J&K, he said so far 1668 cases have tested positive, out of which 1374 are from Kashmir division and 294 are from Jammu division. The number of active cases are 836 of which 620 are in Kashmir Division and 216 are in Jammu division. As many as 809 recoveries which include young children and 23 unfortunate deaths have also been reported.
Referring to prevailing situation, Kansal pointed out there are enough worrying factors in the situation. 15 deaths have been reported in last month alone. There is at least one district which has more than 200 active cases and at least one district with more than 150 active cases. There are at least 2 districts where the number of active cases per million are higher than 150. At least half of the districts have a doubling rate less than 14 days. At least 2 districts have seen a considerable increase in cases even when there are no returnees. In fact, there are many areas where the positivity rate of cases is much higher for local population than for returnees.” he said and added that a number of local, indigenous cases for which contact chains are not yet fully clear have also been reported which is a cause of concern.
He said that over 90,000 stranded persons have already returned to J&K in the last 4 weeks alone, they include 66024 persons by road, 25400 by 30 Shramik special and Covid-19 special Rajdhani trains and 652 persons by air. “J&K is the one state/UT which has smoothly completed more than 85% of its evacuation process.
The Government has consciously adopted a policy of testing 100% of all returnees. All the returnees are being tested, and as a result of the strategy the administration has been successful in tracing 481 positive cases so far.”
By testing people at the entry point we are ensuring that positive cases are traced and isolated at the entry point itself, thereby avoiding any infections getting into the community”, he added.