COVID-19 Alert: Odisha Govt Orders Contact Tracing Of Foreign Returnees

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government on Sunday directed the district collectors and municipal commissioners to focus on surveillance and contact trading of foreign returnees in wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

In a letter, the principal secretary of Health and Family Welfare, Nikunja Bihari Dhal, said that as many as 2,856 persons, who have returned from abroad during the last 14 days, are yet to be contacted by the district surveillance teams.

There is a possibility that these persons could infect others and therefore they need to be contacted at the earliest to ensure their home quarantine, Dhal wrote.

He also asked the collectors and municipal commissioners to focus on the following strategies to check the spread of coronavirus:

—Active surveillance of people who have returned from COVID affected areas (abroad and other states) and quarantine of such people irrespective of symptoms.

—Risk-based testing, isolation of confirmed cases and contact tracing.

—Quarantine of contacts of confirmed cases irrespective of symptoms.