The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has decided to double down on its efforts at contact tracing and enforcing home quarantine norms. Days after volunteer teams were formed at the ward level, they are now deemed insufficient and to achieve more granularity in monitoring, the BBMP has decided to form multi-disciplinary monitoring teams at the polling booth level.
A team of nearly 10 people, including volunteers and ward level officers, led by booth level officers (BLO), generally tasked with electoral roll upgradation, will be in-charge of testing, contact tracing, containment zone management and enforcement of home quarantine measures in the particular booth. There are 8,154 polling booths in the city.
“This will increase the level of micromanagement in the city and achieve a holistic response on the ground. These BLOs will be trained by Wednesday and will begin work soon after,” said BBMP Commissioner B.H. Anil Kumar. The decision came after a review meeting with the data analysis team and other officials on comprehensive contact tracing and testing through data integration and analysis.
Slips in contact tracing and enforcement of home quarantine are some of the reasons why Bengaluru is seeing an exponential rise in the number of cases.
Strict lockdown
Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa on Sunday deliberated on the guidelines for the upcoming one-week lockdown in the city. Revenue Minister R. Ashok, briefing media after the meeting, said a detailed set of guidelines would be issued by the Chief Secretary on Monday.
“Industries in the medical sector will be exempted from lockdown. The rest will have to shut down,” he said. Senior civic officials said the guidelines would be very similar to the Sunday lockdown already in place. Only essential services such as sale of groceries, medicine, milk, and meat will be allowed. Malls and places of worship will remain closed.
Mr. Ashok appealed to residents to travel out if necessary on Monday, and not ask for exemptions or travel passes during the lockdown, indicating the movement of vehicles will likely be severely restricted and the city police are unlikely to issue travel passes liberally.
Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai also said lockdown in the city will be strict and a decision on travel passes would be taken on Monday.
