Coronavirus | Odisha quarantines three persons who returned from Delhi’s Nizamuddin area

Efforts on to trace others, set up medical facilities in all 30 districts of the State.

Odisha said on Tuesday that three persons from the State who attended a religious conference in Delhi's Nizamuddin West area have been quarantined in government hospitals.

Family members of the three persons have also been advised home isolation, said the State government’s Chief Spokesperson for COVID-19, Subroto Bagchi, at an official briefing here.

Mr. Bagchi said the government had also gathered information that some other people from the State were returning after participating in the religious conference that was held in Delhi earlier this month. Efforts are on to trace them, he added.

‘Stay at home’

Reiterating the government’s appeal to the people to stay home to stay safe during the remaining two weeks of the lockdown, Mr. Bagchi also requested people to continue taking necessary precautions to fight the coronavirus.

Mr. Bagchi informed that a total of 473 samples were tested in the State till Tuesday afternoon and the number of persons testing positive for coronavirus still remained three. As many as 57 persons are being kept in isolation wards in different hospitals in the State. The State government has identified 377 quarantine centres with 32,538 beds in 114 Urban Local Bodies in the State, said Mr. Bagchi.

Meanwhile, State Health Minister Naba Kishore Das said that efforts were on to create treatment facilities for COVID-19 patients in all the 30 districts of the State. The treatment facilities for COVID-19 patients will be set up in association with prominent private hospitals in some districts, he said.

Testing facilities

Mr. Das announced that the Indian Council of Medical Research (IMCR) has granted permission to have testing facilities to detect coronavirus cases at the SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack. The State has two such facilities in the State at present – AIIMS Bhubaneswar and the Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC) in Bhubaneswar.

The State government has already requested the ICMR to grant permission for opening testing facilities at the MKCG Medical College and Hospital at Berhampur, VSS Medical College and Hospital at Burla, along with a few more private hospitals, said Mr. Das.