The East Singhbhum administration has kept under home surveillance 26 persons who had come to the city and outskirts from China and other South East Asian countries, district civil surgeon Dr Maheshwar Prasad said on Wednesday.

The step has been taken to ensure none of them is carrying the novel coronavirus.

“A team led by our district epidemiologist has been visiting all the 26 persons ever since they have come to Jamshedpur,” said Dr Prasad. “As is the protocol, state integrated diseases surveillance program (IDSP) office after receiving information from the Union health ministry alerted us about their (the 26 persons’) details from the airports where they arrived. We sent our teams to each of them and are constantly monitoring their condition. So far, none of the 26 have reported of any symptoms of a cold, cough or fever.”

He said the district health department was taking no chances.

“Though as per World Health Organisation (WHO) protocol stipulated by the Union health ministry for novel coronavirus a person needs to be put under home surveillance for 14 days, we are going the extra mile and have decided to keep them under home surveillance for an entire month,” Dr Prasad said.

As per the state IDSP protocol, any such visitor with novel coronavirus symptoms would be kept under isolation wards set up at government health centres. The Sadar Hospital in Khasmahal has a two-bed isolation centre and the MGM Hospital in Sakchi has an eight-bed isolation centre.

“We cannot take risk by simply taking information from the visitors on the phone about their condition as they might try to suppress the symptoms so our team conducts random inspection of the houses of visitors and checks their health personally. We have got two more names one in Mango and in Birsanagar and would be visiting them tomorrow (Thursday),” said an official in the civil surgeon’s office.

MGM superintendent Dr Sanjay Kumar said there was a shortage of surgical masks.

“We are ready with the isolation ward but have to do with only simple surgical masks as there is immense shortage in the market of the N95 respirators. We have sought a few from RIMS in Ranchi,” said Dr Kumar.

Sixteen visitors from China and South East Asian countries who visited Seraikela-Kharsawan have also been kept under home surveillance.

“Fortunately, none of them have reported symptoms like cold, cough or fever,” said Seraikela-Kharsawan civil surgeon Dr Himanshu Barwar.