The Jharkhand government has decided not to implement till May 3 the Centre's guidelines giving relaxations to some shops due to a sudden spurt in Covid-19 cases, chief minister Hemant Soren said on Monday.
He said CRPF personnel have been asked to monitor Ranchi's Hindpiri locality, where the first coronavirus case in the state was detected in a Malaysian woman in March, and then more and more cases followed.
Hemant said that the borders of Ranchi would be sealed to contain the spread of Covid-19.
Sixteen people tested positive for Covid-19 in Jharkhand between Saturday night and Sunday night, the highest single-day jump in the number of cases so far.
'We have taken some important decisions to stop the pandemic in view of the sudden rise in coronavirus cases in the state. The government will not implement the central guidelines to give relaxation to some shops,' Soren told reporters on Monday.
Stating that no shops will be permitted to open till May 3, the last day of the lockdown, Soren added that shops of essential commodities would continue to operate.
In all, 16 fresh novel coronavirus cases surfaced in Jharkhand from Saturday 9pm to Sunday 7pm, state principal health secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni has confirmed.
The instance of 16 infections in 24 hours is the highest for the state so far, beating hollow the earlier number of nine new cases in one day on April 8. This sharp spike takes the number of infections in the state from 66 to 82. The number includes 10 recoveries and three deaths.
Of the 16 new cases, 14 are from Ranchi and two from Garhwa.
Health secretary Kulkarni told The Telegraph that it was a good sign that cases were being detected.
“These cases could be detected by contact tracing, and it is a good sign. If they remained undetected, that would have been the real problem,” Kulkarni said. “People are being treated and recovering as well. We have had two recoveries from Dhanbad on Sunday.”
The youngest Covid-19 patient among the 16 is a six-year-old girl. Her report came late on Saturday from the TB Centre at Itki near Ranchi. The reports of the 15 others came on Sunday from the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi.
Asked what the jump in numbers on a particular day means, Kulkarni said: “This means that as we increased the number of tests, which is currently around 550 a day, we started detecting more infections. It was expected and it is a good sign towards winning the fight against the novel coronavirus.”
On places in Ranchi where the latest Covid-19 positive cases had surfaced, he said briefly: “Hindpiri and Sadar Hospital.”
An official of the Ranchi civil surgeon’s office said that of the 13 who tested positive in Ranchi, four are nurses of Sadar Hospital who had attended to a Covid-19 positive lady who delivered a baby a week ago, one is district official deputed at the Gurunanak School control room, two are ambulance drivers from Loadih and six are from Hindpiri.
Two recoveries
The second reports of two Covid-19 patients of Dhanbad, a 25-year-old electrician of Kumardubi and a 35-year-old railway trackman, tested negative on Sunday, Dhanbad DC Amit Kumar confirmed.
