BHUBANESWAR: As COVID-19 cases continue to surge in Odisha, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday said that with the opening up of flights and railways, the month ahead will be more challenging.
“With opening up of flights and railways, the coming 15 days to a month will be more challenging but I am sure we will handle the same in a professional manner with a humane face,” the Chief Minister said while reviewing the COVID-19 situation in Odisha at a high level video conference meeting.
“Our learnings on the behaviour of virus in India and more particularly in Odisha have given us hope that with strict social distancing, wearing masks and repeated hand washing we should be able to successfully contain the spread of the pandemic,” he said.
Stating that the vulnerable population including the elderly and people with comorbid conditions need extra care, he said that a fortnight of serious awareness creation in all these aspects should be planned. There are many learning points -- scientific, social and administrative -- in the two months of lockdown, he said and added that the response should be tweaked based on this. “We have to restrategise our response based on these learnings so that we are ahead of the pandemic and at the same time bring normalcy in economic and livelihood activities,” he said.
The Chief Minister said social distancing is not social boycotting and added that a combination of awareness creation coupled with strict action is required. “This would also be a target for this week,” he said and added that testing has to be smart to take care of the frontline workers and vulnerable population.
The basic mandatory quarantine period of the state has been tuned on par with ICMR recommendations, he said and added that collectors have been empowered to further extend institutional quarantine on a need based manner in the overall interest of containing COVID-19.
Stating that the temporary medical centres (TMCs) at the gram panchayat level are doing a great job in containing the spread of COVID-19, the Chief Minister said 95 percent of the positive cases in the state are from the quarantine centres which showed the robustness of the system and efforts put by sarpanches, people’s representatives and the government machinery.