With 134 people getting infected from a single source, the Jindal Steel plant at Toranagal in Ballari district, the largest steel plant in India, has emerged as a cluster of COVID-19. A similar cluster was formed at Nanjangud in Mysuru district earlier in the pharma company Jubilant Life Sciences, where 74 people, including employees and their contacts, were infected.
More than 400 primary contacts of those who were in touch with the first case from the Jindal campus (P-4184) have so far been quarantined at different hotels as on Monday apart from the 300 secondary contacts who are home-quarantined. The entire Corex plant on the sprawling Jindal Steel campus where a major portion of the cases of COVID-19 were reported has been sealed down and around 10,750 employees are asked to work from home.
As per senior officers engaged in containment of the pandemic in the district, P-4184, a 35-year-old man and employee of JSW Steel working at the Corex plant on Toranagl campus, after getting permission, took his ailing mother for treatment and dropped her on the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border near Anekal. His mother was then taken by his relatives to her native place, Selam in Tamil Nadu for treatment. He came back to Ballari and worked for about five-six days in his plant as he was asymptomatic.
After the mother tested positive for COVID-19 in Tamil Nadu, the son who accompanied her to State border was immediately isolated and his sample was sent to the lab. On June 3, he along with one more employee of the same plant who travelled to the plant with him tested positive for the disease. These initial infections led to the spread of the disease inside the Jindal campus, especially the Central Management Department (CMD) that interacted with all other departments.
“Apart from Jindal Township in Toranagl, employees from Ballari, Sandur and Hosapete also daily travel together to the Jindal Steel plant in Toranagal, about 35 km from the district headquarter of Ballari, taking the infection to their areas of residences. However, Jindal Township at Toranagal emerged as the hotspot by reporting maximum positive cases,” M. Manjunath, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Ballari, told The Hindu.
“Just as the number of positive cases on its campus began to swell, the Jindal Steel swung into action by further tightening the measures and adding new ones. It formed four committees for to take care of various aspects. A fever-centre that works round the clock has been set up in the plant to break the chain of COVID-19 and people were advised to visit the centre if they sense any of the symptoms,” said Jitendra Vashistha, Head - Corporate Communications, JSW Steel. He further said that a control room, help desk and helpline have also been set up.
As a fallback arrangement to deal with any eventuality, the company had also kept 110 beds ready at the Jindal Sanjeevani Multi-Speciality Hospital, which is now turned into COVID-19 designated hospital.
