'Pondy have to be cautious against neighbouring hotspots'

: People in the union territory

have to be vigilant and cautious about COVID-19 spread as neighbouring Tamil Nadu districts have been hotspots for the infection, a senior health official said here on Friday.

In his daily press briefing, the secretary to Health and Family Welfare Services Prashant Kumar Panda said, "As of now, the Union Territory is safe as there are only three active cases and they are being taken care of in the Indira Gandhi government Medical college hospital."

He said nothing should be taken for granted as Puducherry, Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam regions are surrounded by Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh where the occurrence of the infection was considerable.

 

The territorial Administration has the health and police departments geared up to ensure there was no intrusion of anyone from the neighbouring states into the Union Territory.

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

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

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

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

Director of Health and Family Welfare S.Mohan Kumar said the three active cases were still in the hospital and as two of the three patients showed positive results again. "We will have to monitor them for one more week and as against the expectation that they would be discharged during this week end was now put off by another one week," Mohan Kumar said.

The director said, "I am really worried that the people here still pay no heed to observe the lockdown norms as I could see a number of people moving about in various spots. This is not a good sign as they are only running a serious risk."

"With neighbouring districts and more particularly Chennai coming out with alarming details of the COVID-19, we should be extremely careful and play our part to keep the possible spread of the infection at bay," he said.