Bhubaneswar: The capital city of Odisha as well as Bhadrak will be completely under lock down starting from 8 PM of Friday to 8 PM of Sunday. Odisha Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy intimated about it in a press meet today.
The shut down will be applicable for Bhubaneswar city and Bhadrak town.
The shut down have been ordered to be imposed in Bhubaneswar and Bhadrak because all the five coronavirus positive cases of Odisha are either from Bhubaneswar or Bhadrak. It is to be noted that out of the five cases four are from the capital city and one is from Bhadrak.
The strict measure of ‘shut down’ has been taken to contain probability of community spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) as the 5th person of Odisha who was found coronavirus positive has not any history of travelling to any foreign country or even any other state in the last one month. Hence, the probability of community spread may not be set aside at this point.
During this 48 hour shut down in Bhubaneswar and Bhadrak services including groceries, vegetables, fruits, dairy, fish and meats will not be available. During the 21 days lock down period these essential goods were available but during this coming 48 hour shut down period of 48 hours shops/ business entities selling these goods will remain shut.
However, the medical services will remain open during the shut down. The district administrations will allow a limited number of medicine stores to remain open for the next 48 hours. For healthcare service on emergency basis, the ambulance service is available in Bhubaneswar.
Putting restriction on movement of vehicles, which have been issued pass, DGP Abhay said that all the passes will remain suspended for this 48 hours.
Update:
As per a latest report, the same 48 hour shut down will also be imposed on Cuttack. That means earlier it was announced that the 48 hour shut down which will begin from 8 pm today (Friday) to end at 8 pm on Sunday will be imposed on Bhubaneswar and Bhadrak. However, now it will be imposed on Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Bhadrak.
Today on Friday Odisha Govt declared about the 6th case of coronavirus positive. This time the affected man is from Cuttack. Keeping it in view, Cuttack has also been included to the list of cities/towns where the 48 hour shut down will be imposed.
Ms Kalinga