'Pondy have to be cautious against neighbouring hotspots'

Puducherry, Apr 24 (): People in the union territoryhave to be vigilant and cautious about COVID-19 spread asneighbouring Tamil Nadu districts have been hotspots for theinfection, a senior health official said here on Friday.

In his daily press briefing, the secretary to Healthand Family Welfare Services Prashant Kumar Panda said, "As ofnow, the Union Territory is safe as there are only threeactive cases and they are being taken care of in the IndiraGandhi government Medical college hospital."

He said nothing should be taken for granted asPuducherry, Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam regions are surroundedby Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh where the occurrenceof the infection was considerable.

The territorial Administration has the health andpolice departments geared up to ensure there was no intrusionof anyone from the neighbouring states into the UnionTerritory.

"I thank the people here for their adherence to thenorms of social distancing and other restrictions. But stillour vigil should be stepped up particularly when we aresurrounded by hotspots in other states," Panda said.

"There is no community infection here and Puducherryremains in stage-one only now," he said adding that thehealth workers and functionaries of the ASHA have been doinga brilliant job by conducting door to door surveillance.

The Health Secretary said the workers had visited sofar 2,68,566 houses covering as many as 10,22,864individuals.

There are 2,388 persons in home quarantine and of thetotal 1,548 samples tested so far 1,513 samples testednegative and the results of remaining samples were awaited.The government was using only RT-PCR test as the ICMR haddirected that the Rapid Test kits sent to PuducherryWednesday should be avoided for testing.

Director of Health and Family Welfare S.Mohan Kumar saidthe three active cases were still in the hospital and as twoof the three patients showed positive results again. "We willhave to monitor them for one more week and as against theexpectation that they would be discharged during this weekend was now put off by another one week," Mohan Kumar said. The director said, "I am really worried that the peoplehere still pay no heed to observe the lockdown norms as Icould see a number of people moving about in variousspots. This is not a good sign as they are only running aserious risk." "With neighbouring districts and more particularly Chennaicoming out with alarming details of the COVID-19, we shouldbe extremely careful and play our part to keep the possiblespread of the infection at bay," he said. CORNVG NVG