The house-to-house survey in the containment zone of Kumardubi, set up around a 3km radius of the house of the first novel coronavirus positive patient of the district, started on Friday.
A total of 55 teams of health workers — sahiyas, auxiliary nurse midwives and others — went around taking down details from each member of every house about whether anyone had any symptoms of Covid-19.
The district administration and police on Friday imposed stricter lockdown norms forbidding anybody from venturing out of the house and deputed a team of 22 magistrates in two shifts of 11 each to enforce the measures in the sealed area.
The urban local body Chirkunda Nagar Parishad with its own resources and with the support of tankers provided by Dhanbad Municipal Corporation has started sanitising each street and house using sodium hypochlorite solution (liquid bleach).
The Covid-19 patient was on Thursday night shifted from PMCH to the Central Hospital of BCCL, which the district administration has designated as the Covid-19 hospital of Dhanbad.
A team of senior officials from the district administration and the police led by Dhanbad deputy commissioner Amit Kumar and senior superintendent of police (SSP) Kishore Kaushal on Friday visited Chirkunda and inspected the implementation of the lockdown norms.
They held a meeting with senior officers such as circle officer of Nirsa block Mudassar Mansuri and sub-divisional police officer Vijay Kumar Kushwaha and assessed the house-to-house survey, the sanitisation measures and availability of essential items for the common people.
To ensure home delivery the administration issued a series of phone numbers under different categories such as for grocery one can call 8210450018, 9332204455, 7739340434, 9905168865, 7004148967, 7004148602, 7488344013,7677221829; for gas delivery 7645864832, 9431123898; for packaged drinking water 9386118015; for water tanker 9631113177, 9939913990; medicine 8409491721, 7091166777, 7488344544, 7631093477, 7004133318, 9835390657, 7004510813, 9006972934; fodder/animal feed 7004408706, 9431999985, 7488927021.
The Chirkunda Nagar Parishad also established a control room in Chirkunda and deputed nine community organisers, computer operators, supervisor and clerks by constituting three teams of three persons in each team and issued helpline numbers 9155820883 and 7857044740.
The chairman of Chirkunda Nagar Parishad, Dablu Bauri, said: “We have made all arrangements to minimise the unease of people while they remain at home.”
A 25-year-old man, kept in the isolation ward of PMCH since Tuesday, tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Thursday. He used to work at a factory in Bengal’s Asansol and was brought home by his brother on a bike on April 8 and rushed to the PMCH with fever and cough.
