BHUBANESWAR: At least five employees including a senior official in the rank of joint secretary in Lok Seva Bhawan were put in home isolation after a driver tested positive for Covid-19. The driver of a senior officer in one of the departments had stopped coming to the office since July 7 due to health complications. He tested positive for the coronavirus infection after swab sample test on Sunday.
As a precautionary measure, the senior officer and four other employees who had come in direct contact with him were put in home quarantine. A portion of the department in Lok Seva Bhawan has been sealed for sanitisation and 15 staff asked not to come to the office for 72 hours. Officials of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) said a part of Unit-8 where the 60-year-old driver stays has been disinfected and his neighbours isolated in their houses. Contact tracing is in progress to ascertain the source of infection of the driver as well as persons who may have come in contact with him.
Meanwhile, 14 persons were tested positive for Covid-19 in the city in last 24 hours which includes the driver and nine local contact cases. The local cases include four frontline workers of two Government hospitals and a private hospital, a 75-year-old woman from Kanan Vihar, a 40- year-old man from Jayadurga Nagar in Bomikhal, a 30-yearold man from Nayapalli and a 32-year-old man of Unit-IX. An one-year-old girl child of Radhakrishna Tala Basti in Unit- VI is also one of the locally infected patients.
The toddler and her parents had travelled to a Covid hotspot district. BMC officials said all primary contacts and neighbours of the patients who transmitted the virus locally, have been home quarantined and will be under active surveillance for a week or two. With the new confirmed cases, Covid tally of the city has increased 718 including 353 active cases and 356 recoveries.