ROURKELA: Amid rising concern over increasing Covid-19 cases, the Rourkela administration on Saturday made 14 days of quarantine mandatory for returnees and travellers from 14 districts of the State.
Rourkela ADM Aboli Sunil Naravane in a modified order notified mandatory institutional/home quarantine of 14 days for those entering the Rourkela Municipal Corporation (RMC) limits and Rourkela Industrial Township of Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) from Khurda, Ganjam, Bhadrak, Balsore, Balangir, Nayagarh, Puri, Cuttack, Jagatsinghpur, Keonjhar, Jajpur, Gajapati, Mayurbhanja and Jharsuguda. They would have to mandatorily report at the BPUT registration desk on entry into Rourkela.
Sundargarh district witnessed the highest single day spike of 36 cases in the last 24 hours. But what comes as a great relief for the district administration is that all new patients were in institutional quarantine with no exposure to the community outside. Collector Nikhil Pawan Kalyan on Saturday informed that of the 36 new patients, 23 were direct contacts of previous positive cases at temporary medical centres (TMCs) in Hemgir, Nuagaon, Kuanrmunda and Lathikata blocks besides, the BPUT Covid-19 Care Centre at Rourkela.
The rest 13 had returned from Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh and none had come in contact with locals. Meanwhile, even as the State Government announced six Covid-19 deaths on Saturday and two on Friday, it is silent on the demise of a 64-year-old coronavirus patient at the RSP-run Ispat General Hospital on Friday morning. The patient of Sector-16 area was suffering from severe acute respiratory illness, cough, fever and diarrhea. After his death, Sector-16 was declared containment zone. The ADM said Government would announce reason of death after audit.
Of total 256 positive cases, 78 are active in the district.