Health department officials of Ladakh are saying that the region is witnessing a sharp rise in Covid-19 positive cases due to an inflow of people coming back from different parts of the country as lockdown eases.
A health department official said 104 people tested positive for Covid-19 in Ladakh on Friday, with 36 from Leh and 69 are from Kargil. With this, the number of Covid-19 active cases in Ladakh has gone up to 176, comprising 74 in Leh and 102 in Kargil district.
Even on June 3, there were only 33 active cases of Covid-19 in Ladakh.
“There is an inflow of stranded people back to Ladakh. Most of them are elderly. They are not tested in Delhi as a large number of them cannot afford testing in Delhi and other places, and we see the rise in the Covid-19 cases because of them,” said the official. He said many students have also returned.
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Health department officials, however, say all 176 active cases of Covid-19 in the Ladakh region are stable. They said 57 samples were sent to NCDC New Delhi for testing on Friday.
On June 8, a Joint Deputy Director of the ITBF and his five-year-old child tested positive for COVID-19 in Leh. According to officials, the sample of the child was collected after he complained of fever. The family members of the officer had reached Leh on May 30 by an Air India flight from Delhi and later they had visited different places and had met the senior functionaries of the government. The district magistrate Leh, Sachin Kumar Vaishya on June 9 placed the ITBF officer’s mess near the main market in Leh under containment.
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The DM’s order says, “the objective of this cluster containment is to stop transmission, morbidity and mortality due to COVID-19.”
“Further, for the purpose of active surveillance, the whole of the containment zone shall be supervised by their own medical officers and staff nurses. All the relaxations ordered by the Ministry of Home Affairs shall not be applicable to the containment zone,” the order says.
“Joint Deputy Director, ITBF, Leh shall ensure strict home quarantine of all the contact officers, officials during the office work and meeting hours,” it adds.
Earlier in April and May Ladakh had managed to control Covid-19. The region had witnessed its first Covid-19 positive patient on February 28. It was a 68-year-old-man from Chuchot village, around 20 km from Leh. The man had returned from Iran on February 26 and developed few symptoms of COVID-19. He had started coughing and had developed high fever. He was admitted at Sonam Norboo Memorial Hospital (SNM), Leh, where his samples were taken for Covid-19 and then, he was declared the first Covid-19 positive case in the region. Later, his son, who had no travel history, had contracted the virus from his father.
After the massive contact tracing and strict lockdown, the region had controlled the spread of the Covid-19. But now, the situation appears to be getting worse again.
