BHUBANESWAR: Flour mill of a popular brand operating at Mancheswar Industrial Estate of the City has turned into a Covid cluster and a headache for the municipal administration. On Thursday, the mill reported a whopping 35 cases, taking the confirmed cases tally to 61 in the last 48 hours. The total number of cases, since detection of the first case on July 17, has reached 79.
There is though little clarity on how the transmission started. The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation is ill at ease to explain but stated that the first one to be infected, an employee, had a travel history to a Covid hotspot district.
However, another employee of the mill, admitted to the Jamujhari Covid Care Centre in Khurda after testing positive on Wednesday, had a different view and said the staff who tested positive had not moved out of the city for last one and half month. “He got his test done only after he developed symptoms. It is still not known how he contracted the virus because he would sanitise everything he handled,” he said.
Sources point out that the flour mill used to receive vehicles to deliver grains and dispatch products from different parts. The drivers and transport workers used the toilet facility within the mill. There are reports that some workers of the mill returned from Bihar a fortnight ago but did not follow the quarantine norms. They even did not get tested.
With BMC already imposing restriction on movement of workers from outside into the City, such incidents have put a poser on its surveillance and monitoring. A construction firm too had reported 38 cases following which the civic body restricted all contractors and business organisations to bring labourers or workers from outside the Capital till July end.
Municipal Commissioner Prem Chandra Chaudhary said, around 150 persons employed in the flour mill were quarantined after detection of the first few cases. The mill was also sealed immediately afterwards.