Once in the Green Zone, Kerala’s Wayanad has reported 19 active cases of coronavirus, the maximum in the state, with 15 primary and secondary contacts of a truck driver who returned from Chennai’s Koyambedu market testing positive.
It was on May 2, when the driver tested positive, that Wayanad lost its green-zone status. His wife, mother, daughter, son-in-law, son and grandchildren have all been infected.
R Renuka, district medical officer, Wayanad, said: “He returned from Koyambedu market on April 26 evening. He was asked to be under home quarantine. His samples were collected on April 28 and he tested positive on May 2. We have done his contact tracing and brought all these people under the radar. There was a function related to fixing his son's marriage at his home. That is why so many people came in contact with him.”
The son-in-law of the truck driver who tested positive had a shop in Wayanad and the contact tracing of all those who came to the shop is also underway.
The DMO added that the truck driver was asked to be under home quarantine but even before reaching home on April 26, he went to several places.
“Now we have made it stricter that truck drivers coming from other states will have to follow strict home quarantine.”
Two police personnel also tested positive after coming in contact from this cluster. "One police personnel was the gunman of a Deputy Superintendent of Police. The SP and DySP have gone into quarantine after the personnel tested positive.”
The DMO added that the number of cases are increasing because detection is high and though most of these are asymptomatic, they are being identified and tested through contact tracing.
"We are going in for reverse quarantine in the tribal colonies. We are making sure that people from outside do not enter the colonies and people from the colonies don't come out. Our concentration is on three colonies where there are 374 people.”
The DMO added that the cases were bound to increase with people coming in from other states but asked them to be cautious and follow home quarantine guidelines strictly to help fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
As of May 15, Kerala has about 576 coronavirus cases of which 80 are active. Among the cases, people who came from abroad are 311, eight are foreigners and 70 from other states. A total of 187 people have contracted the virus through contacts.
Comments
0 comment