Bhubaneswar: Odisha government is facing the worst period in its fight against the deadly Coronavirus as large number of migrant labourers are returning to the State.
It is really a nightmare for the Team Odisha for Covid19 of chief minister Naveen Patnaik to keep a tab on the entry of these migrant labourers to the State. Particularly, mingrant labourers from Kerala and Maharastra are headache for the Team Odisha for Covid 19.
About 11 workers from Trissur in Kerala alighted from a train at Rayagada station on Sunday. The alerted district administration spotted them and sent them for quarantine.
But, there are many others who are entering the State by various means of transportation every day. Now with the inter-State check gates are abolished, it would be very difficult to track their movement.
The government has banned entry of inter-State buses to the State from Monday. Much to the relief of the State government the Railway Board has declared that there would be passenger train running till March 31, 2020. The State government, meanwhile, has stepped up the awareness campaign in rural areas.
“But, that would not be enough to identify the migrant labourers returning to the State. Particularly, in tribal district it would be difficult to know about their arrival and subsequent movements”, said a official who is working in the Team Odisha for Covid19.
The government has almost successfully handled the threat coming from the persons coming from abroad. Many of them have registered with the Toll Free Number 104 or with the COVID19 web site and get themselves self-quarantined. Though there are stray cases of persons returning from foreign countries hiding their travel history and some jumping the quarantine, the situation appeared to be under control.
As many as 3474 persons have been registered with 104 helpline so far. The number of patients under treatment remained 2 as all the 76 samples send for test on Sunday found to be negative. While the health of the two patients are stable, the Team Odisha for Covid19 had already located 53 persons out of the 56 those came in contract with the two patients. As of now 28 persons are in hospital isolation.
