Assam reported 15 more Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, making it the sharpest increase in a day.
Health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said parts of Fatasil Ambari, Kumarpara, Shantipur and Panbazar Railway Colony will be declared containment zones by Thursday. Shops in the containment zones will remain closed, he added.
The developments came on the day the first passenger train (Delhi-Dibrugarh) since the lockdown was imposed on March 24 midnight rolled into the state with 842 passengers.
The Covid cases in the state have now reached 79, of which 37 are active cases, 39 have been discharged and two have died. One patient is undergoing treatment in Bihar.
All the 15 persons who tested positive on Wednesday are contacts of a patient who recently tested positive at Fancy Bazar here. The health department had thereafter isolated and collected swab samples of at least 10 people who had come into direct contact with the patient and also collected swabs of 19 secondary contacts, including a doctor.
Sarma tweeted: “Fifteen persons are tested Covid19 positive in Kamrup metro. All are related to patient from Guwahati’s Fancy Bazar, who tested positive recently. All under quarantine and please don’t panic”.
The state government is also facing a challenge in the form of the estimated 12,000 people who are expected to enter the state by train in a week. People are also coming by private vehicles and buses every day.
Dispur is planning to quarantine the homebound people in facilities set up in their respective constituencies. Sources said once the facilities in the district headquarters fill up, the people will be quarantines in the rural areas. The deputy commissioners have been directed to ferry the people to their respective district headquarters by bus and quarantine them after screening. The health department has asked its employees to thoroughly screen all passengers.
Sarma said public places like schools, colleges and Anganwadi centres have been turned into quarantine facilities and the state public health engineering department has been directed to set up toilets and provide drinking water.
The state government has requested the relatives of train passengers not to come to railway stations to receive them.
As many as 29 people, including students and professionals from nine districts of lower Assam, were the first to alight from the New Delhi-Dibrugarh Up Rajdhani Express, which had left New Delhi on Tuesday to reach Dibrugarh on Thursday morning, at Kokrajhar railway station at 7.20pm on Wednesday.
Assam minister for social welfare and soil conservation, Pramila Rani Brahma, received them at the station and waved the traditional aronai (scarf) as a goodwill gesture. The passengers were screened before they left for SAI quarantine centre in Kokrajhar. Some students were taken to hotels for 14-day quarantine.
The Dibrugarh district administration has set up a screening centre at the railway station. The passengers will be allowed to go to their respective quarantine facilities only after screening.
Many of the Delhi-Dibrugarh train passengers are from Arunachal Pradesh and their state government has made arrangements to ferry them from Dibrugarh. The officials of Arunachal Bhawan in Dibrugarh, in collaboration with the district administration, will arrange vehicles for their passengers.
Altogether 163 students in six buses also reached Guwahati from Delhi while 24 cancer patients and their attendants in one bus reached Guwahati from Chennai. Sarma received them and discussed the 14-day mandatory quarantine process they will have to go through.
Additional reporting by Avik Chakraborty in Dibrugarh and Rinoy Basumatary in Kokrajhar