NE NEWS SERVICE
PUDUCHERRY, MAY 9
Puducherry Health Minister Malladi Krishna Rao said that the Centre has lauded the performance of Congress government in keeping the spread of COVID-19 at bay as there had been only two to three active cases of the infection on Saturday.
Addressing reporters here, Rao said the Joint Secretaries of the Union Health Ministry had contacted him seeking to clarify as to whether Puducherry was ‘really having such a small number of active cases.’
The officials also wanted to know whether the figures furnished were really ‘correct.’ They raised eyebrows largely because of the high incidence of the pandemic in the neighbouring districts of Villupuram and Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu, he said.
Rao said he had told them that the team work done by departments of Health, Police, Revenue and Disaster Management, Public Health and other line departments here has been chiefly responsible for the good achievement of Union Territory.
He said he had apprised the officials of the meticulous sealing of all main entry routes between Puducherry and Tamil Nadu besides blocking of all the 85 small routes through which one can intrude into the Union Territory, enabling the Narayanasamy-government to prevent spread of the infection.
Rao further said presently there were only three active cases, one each from Reddiarpalayam, Kutchipalayam and Sellipet villages in the state government-run Indira Gandhi Medical college hospital, undergoing treatment. Although there were only two cases, on Friday the patient from Sellipet was the latest admission. All these three cases had contact tracing history, the Minister said.
He said that there should be no extension of ongoing lockdown beyond May 17 and hence the cooperation of the people is absolutely necessary to adhere to `social distancing and using of masks`.
Rao said the government was evolving a plan to bring back all those belonging to Puducherry and were residing in other States.
Secretary to Health Prashant Kumar Panda who was also present said that there should be considerable increase in the number of people downloading ‘Aarogya Sethu’ apps in their mobiles as the present number was ‘very small’.
Meanwhile, Director of Health and Family Welfare Services S Mohan Kumar said the medical personnel from private medical colleges were also associated with the present task of testing the people for COVID 19.
As many as 4,111 people were tested so far and the results of 3,866 samples were found to be negative and that of remaining samples were awaited.
