The number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise in Mysuru district with five more persons testing positive on Wednesday.
Of the five new cases, two are employees of the Nanjangud-based pharmaceutical company and three cases are the primary contacts of Patient Number 52, the pharma company employee who was the first to get the contagion.
With the five new cases, the total number of cases linked to the employees and their contacts has touched 17. The cases in Mysuru district in total stand at 19.
Patient number 103, a 37-year-old male and a resident of Nanjangud town, and patient number 104, who is a 27-year-old male and a resident of Nanjangud, are employees of the company who tested positive on Wednesday. However, a 33-year-old male, who is patient number 105, hails from Bengaluru and the primary contact of P-103.
Patient number 109 is a 63-year-old man who is the primary contact of P-52 and patient number 110 is the wife of P-52, who works in the quality assurance section of the company. All five confirmed cases had been isolated in the designated hospital in Mysuru.
Minister in-charge of Mysuru district V. Somanna, accompanied by Deputy Commissioner Abhiram G. Sankar and Superintendent of Police C.B. Ryshyanth, inspected the pharmaceutical company premises in Nanjangud and steps taken to contain the spread.
Tahsildar Mahesh said as many as 1,458 employees of the company had been placed in quarantine. Among them, 761 were from Nanjangud alone and the rest from Mysuru and other taluks. Some employees had been placed in government facility quarantine in hotels at Mysuru and Nanjangud, making all necessary arrangements, he added.
Mr. Ryshyanth said the police were keeping a close watch on those placed in home quarantine and they shall ensure none of them step out of their homes. There was no need for the public to panic, he added.
Later, in a press conference in the evening, Mr. Somanna said Nanjangud had been categorised in “red zone” by the Centre because of the growing number of cases linked to the company.
‘No community transmission’
The Deputy Commissioner clarified again that there was no “community transmission” with regard to the Nanjangud pharma company cases since the infected had been the primary contacts (colleagues and family members) of the first patient and others infected subsequently.
On the resistance from locals for keeping the employees in government facility quarantine set up in hotels and lodges instead of hospitals, Mr. Sankar said the contagion does not spread through air and the locals need not panic over the measures taken by the district administration. “Those in quarantine do not step out of their rooms as all facilities had been given to them. Do not resist the steps taken by us,” he said.
The DC said vegetables and other essentials can be transported to Kerala and Tamil Nadu through other routes such as Suttur and Gundlupet since entry and exit at Nanjangud had been blocked with the town declared as a containment area. No vehicles are allowed barring essentials supplied to the town.
