The Srinagar control room established for coordinating measures to contain coronavirus spread, has received complaints against over 400 persons who have returned from outside J&K in the recent past but concealed their travel histories, an official handout said.
The complaints have been received during the past week afterthe first covid-19 positive case in the district surfaced on March 18.
Of these, over 200 complaints have been verified and foundto be true so far after surveillance teams traced the culpable persons. “Around150 of these persons with recent travel histories to outside countries havebeen shifted to quarantine,” the statement said.
Investigations and verifications have revealed that thesepersons have returned from different countries which among others includeItaly, Iran, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Hungary, Taiwan, Malaysia andKazakhstan, it said.
“The remaining 50-odd persons were found to have hadnational travel histories and were put under home quarantine,” it said. Thestatement added the other persons who are yet to be traced, are under theprocess of tracking.
It should be noted that a well-equipped control room with arobust mechanism for coordination and tracing of suspected cases has beenestablished in the district, which includes an elaborate mechanism ofsurveillance with over 50 teams constituted as part of it assisting it intracing suspected cases, it said.
In addition to a full-fledged infrastructural set-up whichincludes IT-enabled apparatus and mechanism the control room is manned with adedicated team of IT and healthcare professionals. It operates under thesupervision of the Additional Deputy Commissioner Masrat Hashim who has beendesignated as the nodal officer for it. It should be noted that a total ofaround 1750 persons with recent travel histories to outside countries have beenput under quarantine in 40 out of 90 facilities set up so far in the district.
Each of these quarantine facilities set up in well-equippedhotels and government accommodations have been equipped with kinds offacilities for comfortable quarantine of those shifted therein. Quarantinefacilities set up in the district are operating under the supervision of theAdditional Deputy Commissioner Srinagar M Haneef Balkhi.
Deputy Commissioner Srinagar Dr Shahid Iqbal Choudhary ismonitoring all these efforts round-the-clock to ensure there are no lapses inpreventive measures the administration has put in place for containment ofspread of coronavirus in the district. He is also monitoring the facilitiesprovided to inmates at quarantine centres.