Tripura government has declared three wards of Agartala Municipal Corporation as containment zones from Thursday to arrest the Covid 2.0 surge.
West Tripura district magistrate Ravel Hemendra Kumar issued an order on Wednesday demarcating AMC ward no 05, 21 and 46 as the containment zones along with detailed guidelines of restrictions. The containment enforcement will come into force from 12 noon on Thursday. However, another notification relating to the timing may be issued soon.
The decision was taken as the state reels under serious Covid rise for the last few days.
Moreover, for speedy detection of the cases, the rapid antigen tests for the whole area put under restrictions would be arranged.
Addressing the press at the civil secretariat, Education Minister Ratan Lal Nath said, “in order to prevent the spread of Covid 19, the government of Tripura has declared containment zones in AMC ward no 5, 21 and 46 for next ten days. These areas are now contributing a sizable number of cases to the state’s total caseload. Apart from this, the administration is keeping a close watch on a number of wards—12, 20, 02, 24, 33, 45 and 49 where the positivity rate is also going up. As soon as positivity rate shall cross the critical ten percent mark, similar restrictions shall be imposed.
According to Nath, Keeping in view the hardship that will be caused to the poor families living in these wards due to containment order, food packets will be distributed to all eligible families living within these wards. These packets will contain 8 items—10 Kgs of rice, Dal 2 Kg, Potato 3 Kg, Onion 2 Kg, 500 gm soybean, 200gm milk powder, 1 Kg salt etc, he added.
Replying to a query on the eligible households, he said, “in total, there are 8,550 ration cards if all the containment wards are put together. Among them, 919 belong to the AAY category, 2,655 are from the priority group and 600 to 700 people are from the deserving APL category. So, 50 percent of the people are supposed to get the benefit of the scheme”.
Nath also informed the media persons that Rapid Antigen Tests for all the families residing in the containment zones is made mandatory and dedicated teams for the tests were also pressed into action. “Expectedly, the mass door-to-door sample collection will begin from Thursday”, said Nath.
Meanwhile, emergency services like police, TSR, Traffic and health services have been exempted from the prohibitory orders. Grocery, medical and milk booths are allowed to operate in between the time frame of 5 am to 6 pm.
