BHUBANESWAR: Seven persons including four employees of railways tested positive for coronavirus in the Capital city of Bhubaneswar on Friday. Three among them are local cases. Two days after seven employees of East Coast Railway (ECoR) tested positive, four more employees were found infected with the virus in the last 24 hours.
The four male employees in the age group of 30 to 38 years had travel history to Delhi and were tested COVID-19 positive while undergoing home quarantine following their return, informed officials of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC).
The local cases include a 45-year-old female and minor boy of a family in Housing Board Colony of Dumduma who is linked to a previous positive case with travel history of Ganjam besides, a 31-year-old female who is an employee of a private hospital in the city.
A 28-year-old male of Housing Board Colony in Chandrasekharpur area recovered from the disease on the day. With the seven new cases, COVID-19 tally of the city surged to 165 with 78 active cases and 83 recovered cases. Three patients have succumbed to the disease so far.
Meanwhile, in view of the increasing number of cases in the city, BMC has expedited distribution of thermal screening devices at ward level to deal effectively with outbreak of the pandemic in the city.
Additional Commissioner of BMC Surath Chanda Mallick said the devices were distributed in Ward 29 on Friday. "We have procured five thermal screening devices for each ward which will be used by COVID-19 Sachetaks and surveillance teams during door to door survey and active surveillance," he said.
Each of the devices has been procured at a cost of around Rs 3,000. Mallick informed that in wake of rising number of cases in Salia Sahi, the largest slum of the Capital city, massive awareness programme on social distancing has been launched in the slum areas.