Agartala: Anticipating the fourth wave of Covid19, Tripura government has reinforced wearing face and nose cover masks in public places from Tuesday along with all other precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the disease.
In the meeting of the State Task Force of Covid19 on Monday expressed concern over the sudden spike of Covid positive cases in the state and decided to go for aggressive enforcement against non-wearing or improper wearing of masks especially in public places including educational institutions, market and government offices.
The State Surveillance Officer Dr Deep Kumar Debbarma said to contain the spread of the coronavirus, the department would organise mass testing in offices and market places at the initial stage. The situation will be reviewed after one week and a decision on mass testing in the entry points will be taken later on.
He also appealed to all to strictly follow the Covid appropriate behaviour and specially appealed to the persons with comorbidities to go for testing if they develop any symptoms. As of 131 persons have been infected by Covid over the past one week and West Tripura district contributed 82 cases alone.
A 221-bed Dedicated Hospital for Covid treatment is functioning in GBP hospital where eight persons with Covid infection are admitted now, he informed adding as many as 22 fresh positive cases have been detected out of 309 samples tested in the past 24 hours—the positivity rate is 7.12 per cent, according to an official report.
After September 2021, the Covid graph fell drastically and Tripura has passed months without a single case. However, recently Covid19 cases have started spiking and Agartala Municipal Corporation area has become the epicenter of the spread and none of the infected person is
having any travel history, which indicated it’s a local transmission, Debbarma said.
According to Debbarma only eight patients out of the total 131 are hospitalized and others are in home isolation and stated, “We are giving preference to home isolation because if the patient is mild symptomatic, he should stay in his comfort zone for getting cured in an ideal timeframe. But unfortunately, we have failed to get in touch with 37 people who had tested positive to the virus”.
Among the 131 positive patients, seven were administered with only one dose of vaccine, 74 of them received both the jabs and 11 people did not receive any vaccine. So far, the report revealed that patients of all age groups were found to be susceptible to this phase of transmission, he added.
Meanwhile, Tripura government has also decided to approach Central government seeking relaxations for the booster dose for 18 years and above eligible population. Except for the above 60 -yrs of age group, the booster dose of vaccine is not available in the government hospitals and as a result, a large number of people in the state have not yet administered the booster dose of vaccine.
