The migration-prone Ganjam district, which reported 42 COVID-19 cases on Thursday, has emerged as a major hotspot in Odisha.
Many who returned from Surat have tested positive in the district. The district reported its first two cases on May 3, by which time the State had already detected more than 160 cases, with the majority from Bhubaneswar and districts of Jajpur, Bhadrak, Balasore and Sundargarh.
Interactive map of confirmed coronavirus cases in India
The first two cases in Ganjam were Surat returnees, as Odia people working in Gujarat began to return to their hometowns by buses.
The number of cases started galloping day by day in Ganjam. As many as 52 cases were detected in the district on Wednesday, when its total crossed 200, and the State crossed 500 with the detection of 101 cases on a single day.
Data | The Nizamuddin cluster and the coronavirus spread
Of the total 611 cases reported in Odisha so far, Ganjam alone has added 252, posing a challenge to the State administration in handling the emerging crisis in the district.
In fact, barring one Kerala returnee who had tested positive for COVID-19 in Ganjam, the remaining cases were all Surat returnees.
While a total of 88,543 Odia people had returned to the State by Wednesday, it is said that more than 40,000 returned to Ganjam.
A majority of the returnees to Ganjam by buses and trains were from Surat, with a few others from different States. Some migrant workers had also managed to return to the district from Chennai by boats.
Measures taken
The State government has initiated adequate measures to handle the crisis in Ganjam, which also happens to be the home district of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
Three IAS officers and five officials of the State Administrative Service have been deputed to assist the district administration to cope with the crisis. The district has 3,212 villages spread over 503 gram panchayats, apart from one Municipal Corporation, one Municipality and 16 Notified Area Councils.
Apart from setting up one exclusive hospital in the district, the government has also set up four COVID-19 care centres and more than 3,000 temporary medical centres (TMCs) at the gram panchayat level, where the returnees are being put in quarantine.
The lone silver lining till date is that all those testing positive were from the TMCs, making it easy for the administration to shift them to the care centres and those with serious symptoms to the COVID-19 hospital.
Apart from Ganjam, the other red zones in the State are Bhubaneswar in Khordha district and the districts of Jajpur, Bhadrak, Balasore and Angul.
Most of those testing positive in Odisha in the past few days have been migrants returning from other States. A few have tested positive in containment zones and other places.
Of the total 73 new cases detected on Thursday that took the State’s total to 611, as many as 50 were Surat returnees. Of the remaining 23 cases, 20 had returned from West Bengal, one from Karnataka and two were detected in a containment zone.
