The Prakasam district administration heaved a sigh of relief on Sunday with five persons with suspected symptoms testing negative for COVID-19 and the foreign returned student who had tested positive responding well to the treatment.
District Collector and nodal officer P. Bhaskar told The Hindu that 25 persons with foreign travel history were identified during the door-to-door survey in the containment zone, comprising the 3-km area of ZP Colony, and put under house quarantine.
All the persons with whom the London-returned student had come in contact with during his travel from Hyderabad to Ongole were also kept under observation, he said after 20 teams of health workers screened each and every person in 1,900 houses in the cluster on Sunday.
Containment plan
Lockdown would be in force till the month-end as part of the containment action plan in the zone where educational institutions, cinema halls, shopping malls and other business establishments were closed down.
The action plan involved monitoring of about 530 households in the 250- metre high-risk zone for 14 days in the cluster and curtailing the movement of people.
The district administration regulated the functioning of places of worship to ensure social distancing and stepped up awareness campaign through various modes, including social media.
Under observation
As many as 120 foreign-returned persons were identified by a team of health workers and village/ward volunteers elsewhere in the district and kept under observation to prevent the spread of the disease, he explained, adding this was besides the list furnished by the Union Government from time to time about persons with foreign travel history.
Gearing up for meeting any exigencies, four quarantine centres were arranged with 700 beds in Ongole, Maddipadu, Markapur and Kandukur to provide high-end treatment for persons with symptoms of the disease, he said.
