BHUBANESWAR: THE Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Tuesday sealed the Tech Mahindra Campus citing violation of COVID guidelines after seven of its employees tested positive for coronavirus in last one week. The Bhubaneswar facility of the multinational IT services firm will remain shut till Thursday for sanitisation. Around 65 personnel of the firm have been sent to home quarantine and their swab test will be conducted if they develop symptoms.
The cluster of cases, however, has raised a question on local transmission. The BMC suspect it to have spread from a person having travel history while sources indicated that the infection took place locally. The BMC officials claimed that the first person to be tested positive in the campus had a travel history. However, the Tech Mahindra in a statement issued to The New Indian Express said “none of the employees who have been tested positive, have any travel history.” An official from the firm, requesting anonymity, said the person who tested positive first was home quarantined on June 18 after developing symptoms. He had come to office on previous two days and did not have any travel history.
Once he developed symptoms and sent to home quarantine, the firm carried out contact tracing and quarantined 32 employees. It submitted the list of employees put in home quarantine to BMC after which the civic body came for further contact tracing. Six more patients tested positive between July 1 and 5 following which, all the other employees were home quarantined and the IT firm shut operations on its own campus. A day later, the civic body fixed its seal notice. The BMC, later, issued a tweet saying that “the company didn’t follow the quarantine guidelines after detection of positive case of an employee. Now all the employees in contact are quarantined.”
A Tech Mahindra spokesperson said the Bhubaneswar facility was immediately closed after identification of positive cases, in line with Government guidelines. “We are closely working with BMC and monitoring health of our associates. Besides, we are undertaking all the necessary safety measures to keep them and their families safe,” the spokesperson said, adding that the company has a comprehensive Covid-19 safety plan with regular sanitation, risk assessment and preventive control measures in place.