Odisha orders complete shutdown in 3 districts

April 23, 2020 21:08

The Odisha government announced a curfew-like complete shutdown in three hotspot districts of Balasore, Bhadrak and Jajpur from 10 pm on Thursday to conduct active surveillance and contact tracing for COVID-19.

Chief Secretary A K Tripathy said all activities will remain suspended for 60 hours till 10 am on April 26 during the shutdown in the three districts, which will be like a

curfew.

All shops dealing in essential commodities will remain closed during the period barring some select medicine stores, he said.

"We were compelled to take the step because of the extraordinary situation created following the detection of 29 COVID-19 cases within a span of only five days in these three districts," the Chief Secretary said.

Odisha has reported 87 confirmed cases of coronavirus so far, including one death.

Tripathy said a similar complete shutdown imposed earlier in Bhubaneswar for 48 hours in the first week of this month had yielded good results as no COVID-19 case has been detected from the state capital since April 14.

Stating that the situation in these districts has become a cause of concern for the state, he said since most patients have West Bengal links concrete steps have been taken to seal the border with the neighbouring state to prevent unauthorised entry.

-- PTI

« Back to LIVE

TOP STORIES

3,300 CISF jawans to replace CRPF in Parliament security starting Monday

The parliament duty group of the CRPF wound up its entire administrative and operational paraphernalia -- vehicles, weapons and commandos -- from the complex on Friday and its commander, a deputy inspector general-rank officer, handed...

Bibhav Kumar sent to 5-day police custody in Maliwal assault case

It noted the prosecution's submissions about the need to take Kumar to Mumbai and other parts of the national capital to collect evidence, which was not possible without the accused's custody.

AAP workers marching towards BJP HQ detained, Sec 144 imposed

The traffic police also issued an advisory in view of the protest planned outside the BJP office at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg, while entry and exit have been disallowed at the nearest ITO metro station.

Factors that will guide the markets this week

The last batch of quarterly earnings, global trends and trading activity of foreign investors will guide the equity market movement in a holiday-shortened week ahead, analysts said. Volatility may continue amid investors' cautious...

'God's plan, baby': Yash Dayal redeems himself

Yash Dayal had the haunting memory of Rinku Singh's five consecutive sixes last year when Mahendra Singh Dhoni lofted his full-toss over the Chinnaswamy stadium roof in Saturday's crucial IPL match in Bengaluru.