Bokaro district is witnessing a rise in micro-containment zones. In a bid to contain the spread and rising Covid-19 cases, the administration has set up 278 containment zones, mostly in urban areas.

More than 1000 cases have surfaced in the last 12 days of which 559 cases are active in the district.

The maximum micro-containment zones are in Bokaro Steel Township and Chas Township areas. The administration has increased Covid testing which.

Since August 31, two Covid-19 camps were installed in more than a dozen pockets across the district.

“Administration also has a plan to organise a third mega camp on September, 16 at 14 places across the district specially in slums keeping a target to test more than 8000 residents,” said Shashi Prakash Singh, sub-divisional officer (SDO), Chas. More number of testing, leads to more detection of cases and therefore micro-containment zones are rising.

More than 1500 residents are tested every day. The patients detected positive according to their health conditions were either sent to a dedicated Covid hospital or put in institutional Covid Care Centres. At present more than 180 residents are in home isolation.

According to protocol, an administration declares a locality a micro-containment zone when the infected person is a resident of the area. A team from health department does contact tracing exercise and conduct sampling for Covid-19 of the family members and neighbours of the infected persons, said a health department officer.

The positive cases in the district are rising. Assessing the situation, deputy commissioner, Rajesh Kumar Singh has appealed to people to take precautionary measures like wearing masks and maintain social-distancing.

The number of micro-containment zones keeps varying as infected persons recover and health departments ensure that there are no other positive patients in the locality.

Disaster management officer, Shakti Kumar, said at present there are 278 micro-containment zones in the district. In comparison to rural areas, the containment zones are high in urban areas.

Bokaro had around 80 micro-containment zones in August, but spurt in cases has increased its number to 278. Health department sources said that the number of containment zones is likely to increase after a mega Covid-19 sampling camp organised for Wednesday.