The district has seen a sudden spike in COVID positive cases in the last one week. A total of 83 cases were recorded in the last four days and most of the cases were recorded from the rural parts of the district.
In the last one week, Anakapalle (Urban) and Atchutapuram has become the hot spots in the district.
The jaggery town recorded 17 cases with 14 cases coming from one electronic shop. All the infected were from the family that owned the shop and their employees.
Atchutapuram recorded 12 cases from one single pharmaceutical company. While four of the infected technically are residents of Atchutapuram, eight others hail from various areas in Visakhapatnam city.
The district police are making all out efforts to map the contact list of the infected persons from Anakapalle and Atchutapuram.
“Contact listing play the most important part in containing the spread of COVID and that is why were focussing on it,” said Superintendent of Police Attada Babujee.
In the last week of May, Narsipatnam was the only containment zone in the district, with four cases. But as on date, the district has 19 containment zones and over 50 cases with 38 being active ones. And out of the 50 odd cases, 29 are from Anakapalle and Atchutapuram.
According to Mr. Babujee, the challenge is to control the free movement of people after opening up. “Apart from policing we now need to do more of convincing,” he said.
The only way to keep COVID at bay is to wear masks, improve personal hygiene and maintain social distancing.
“Under the new guidelines of relaxation, following the protocol has become more important,” he said.
Speaking about the steps being taken, he said that the police force is focussing on perimeter containment, contact tracing, home quarantine and closely following up with the returnees both domestic and foreign.
As on date there are about 600 domestic returnees, who have come by various flights, and 800, who have come by trains, in quarantine facilities in the district.
