With four persons who recently returned from Delhi testing positive for coronavirus in Prakasam district, authorities doubled their efforts to track down hundreds of persons who have also returned from the national capital recently.
The four new cases have taken the total number of infected persons in the district to 15.
Three of the persons who contracted COVID-19 hail from Islampet in Ongole. The fourth person who tested positive hails from Chimakurthy town and had also attended the religious congregation in Delhi, Prakasam District Health and Medical Officer Dr. S.Appala Naidu said while overseeing implementation of the cluster containment strategy.
Taking a dim view of the Tablighi Jamaat meeting in Nizamuddin, which is said to be responsible for a large number of cases across the country, State Energy Minister Balineni Srinivasa Reddy requested all those who attended the congregation to voluntarily undergo screening in the interest of their families and friends.
The district administration has so far identified 130 persons who had returned to the district after attending the Tablighi Jamaat meeting, Collector P. Bhaskar said. “There is a possibility of some more persons having visited Delhi without reserved train tickets,” he said. All those who had returned from Delhi and those who came in contact with them had been quarantined.
Twenty Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) implemented the cluster containment action plan in the colonies coming under a 3-km radius of Islampet and also in the entire Chimakurthy town. A sanitation drive was undertaken by the civic staff in both the places.
Dr. Appala Naidu asked denizens in Ongole and other places to confine themselves to their homes and follow the WHO guidelines to avert the spread of the dreaded disease.
Red alert in Nellore
In Nellore, two more persons tested positive for COVID-19, taking the total number of persons who have contracted the disease in the district to three.
A red alert was sounded in the 43rd and 47th divisions in Nellore city, from where a large number of persons visited the national capital to attend the Nizamuddin religious congregation.
A cluster containment strategy was implemented in Naidupeta and Rebala near Buchireddipalem by health officials. All entry and exit points to the two divisions were sealed to prevent movement of people to and from the containment zones.
Meanwhile, lemon growers were in for big trouble due to lack of orders from traders in Delhi, Lucknow, Varanasi and Kolkata. The farmers from upland areas like Gudur and Venkatagiri, who could move only 30 tonnes of the produce per day to Chennai, urged the district administration to come to their rescue.
