Containment area in Bidar city sees 11 new positive cases

District administration suspects there may be more number of such cases

Deputy Commissioner H.R. Mahadev addressing a media conference in Bidar on Wednesday.

Bidar, which opened its COVID-19 account with 11 cases in a single day on April 2 and continued to register positive cases since then, registered 11 new cases on Wednesday, taking the total number of positive cases in the district to 41 that included a death and 14 discharged patients.

The new cases are P-931, a 30-year-old man, P-932, a 26-year-old woman, P-936, a 36-year-old woman, P-937, a 17-year-old boy, P-938, a 36-year-old woman, P-939, a 31-year-old woman, P-940, a 15-year-old girl, P-941, a 16-year-old girl, P-942, a 14-year-old girl, P-943, a 34-year-old woman, and P-959, a 44-year-old man.

As per the media bulletin released by the Department of Health and Family Welfare, all the new cases were reported from a containment zone in the old city in Bidar and the specific source of infection is not known, leaving the district administration with the tough job of identifying the source of infection to prevent further spread of the deadly disease from the same source.

However, Bidar Deputy Commissioner H.R. Mahadev categorically concluded that the source of infection is one of “those who had returned from Delhi”, obliquely referring to the participants of Tablighi Jamaat religious congregation organised at Delhi’s Nizamuddin Markaz.

Addressing a media conference on Wednesday, Mr. Mahadev said that the administration suspected that the old city area, now a containment zone after it reported several positive cases of COVID-19, might have more number of active cases. He has decided to test more number of people from the area for the disease.

“We need not jump to the conclusion that it has now become community transmission. We had decided to examine 5,000 people in that part of the old city which has reported more number of positive cases, and finally, we sent the swab samples of around 3,500 people. Around 2,500 more samples from the same area would shortly be sent for test. Now, as you see, our decision has been right as we have found more number of positive cases from that area,” he said, pointing to the 11 new cases reported from the same area.

The officer also appealed to the people not to panic as the district administration is trying to identify every infected person in the area and isolate him so that the area could be free from COVID-19 in a fortnight.