ROURKELA: Amid surge in Covid-19 cases, Rourkela, Kalunga Industrial Estate, Sundargarh and Birmitrapur towns observed weekend shut down from Saturday with restrictions on movement of people and non-essential activities.
Market places remained closed and roads wore a deserted look.
According to two separate shutdown orders issued by the Sundargarh Collector Nikhil Pawan Kalyan, Rourkela citycomprising of Rourkela Municipal Corporation (RMC) limits and Rourkela Industrial Township of Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) and Kalunga IE would observe two-day weekend shutdown on Saturday and Sunday till July 31.
For Sundargarh town though, the shutdown was only for this week and from Monday, movement of people and essential activities will only be allowed from 6 am to 2 pm.
Similarly, the three-day shutdown order issued by the Panposh Sub-Collector Biswajit Mohapatra for Birmitrapur town ends on Monday evening at 6 pm.
The district on Friday evening reported 44 positive cases, mostly from Rourkela and its vicinity. The slight dip in Covid count came as a relief for the administration as the district had reported 78, 83 and 62 cases on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday respectively.
Sundargarh’s tally rose to 660 and 440 of the total cases were reported over the last eight days.
There are 404 active cases now whereas the recovery rate was three times higher than the active cases till July 2.
The Collector said of 44 cases, three are admitted to Covid-19 Hospital at Bhubaneswar, two symptomatic patients had returned from Ganjam district and Bengaluru and rest cases are contacts of previous positive cases and asymptomatic.
Bed strength in Covid hospitals will be increased to 2,000 from the present 1,200 by July 20 and a Covid care centre would be readied in Bonai sub-division by July 15.
Kalyan said all ULBs and gram panchayats in the district would have Covid-19 Care Houses for suspected persons.