COVID-19: Ensure home quarantine of residents with travel

The Assam government on Sunday asked apartment societies in the state to ensure home quarantine of residents who recently returned from novel coronavirus-affected places.

The Assam State Disaster Management Authority asked the management committees of the apartments to collect information on the health condition and travel history of the residents.

It also asked the committees to assist the persons placed under home isolation in buying essential commodities.

All necessary psycho-social support should be provided to them while maintaining infection control protocols, it said.

The management committees must also restrict any discriminatory practice that may hurt the self-esteem of the individual, the advisory said.

It also asked the apartment societies to limit the access of visitors inside the premises and allow them in only after taking their details including travel history.

Each apartment society shall enforce hand washing at the time of entry for visitors as well as residents, the advisory said.

It asked them to refrain from organising any community event requiring a gathering of more than five persons, ensure the closure of swimming pools, fitness centres and sanitise lift switches, handrails, gates and grills.

Home deliveries must be placed outside the premises and residents be asked to collect the items only after disinfecting those, the advisory said.

It directed the societies to ask the residents to give leave with pay to domestic workers who work in several houses.

Meanwhile, Rajya Sabha MP from Assam, Ripun Bora commissioned Rs 1 crore from his MPLADS funds for combating COVID-19.

Bora, also the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee president, told PTI he also donated his one month's salary of Rs 1 lakh and his wife Monika Bora's ex-MLA monthly pension of Rs 45,000 to the Assam Chief Minister's Relief Fund for COVID-19.

He sent a letter to the Sonitpur district deputy commissioner urging him to release the MPLADS funds to the state government for improving medical facilities to fight the disease.

"The funds may be utilised for buying ventilators and other equipment for temporary hospitals as Assam government may deem fit and proper in connection with the fight against coronavirus," the letter stated.

No COVID-19 case has been reported in Assam so far.