Naveen Reviews COVID-19 Situation in Odisha, Hails Efforts of Peoples’ Representatives in Containing Spread of Coronavirus

Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today reviewed the COVID-19 situation in the State and lauded the efforts put by sarpanches, peoples representatives and the entire government machinery from top to bottom cutting across departments to contain the spread of the disease.

Here is the full text of the Chief Minister’s statement:

We are now two months into lockdown. There are many learning points in these two months both scientific, social and administrative.

We have to restrategise our response based on these learnings so that we are ahead of the pandemic and at the same time bring normalcy in economic and livelihood activities.

Our learnings on the behavior of virus in India and more particularly in odisha has given us hope that with strict social distancing, wearing masks and repeated hand washing we should be able to successfully contain the spread of pandemic. Also our learning is that vulnerable population need extra care, elderly persons, people with comorbid conditions etc. So I would suggest that we plan a fortnight of serious awareness creation in all the above mentioned points.

Social distancing is not social boycotting. A combination of awareness creation coupled with strict action is required. This would also be a target for this week.

Testing has to be smart to take care of our Frontline workers and vulnerable population. I am happy to know that we are one of the leading states in testing in the country and that we could establish decentralized testing facilities in every part of the state.

We have tuned our basic mandatory quarantine period on par with ICMR recommendations. At the same time empowered collectors to further extend institutional quarantine on a need based manner in the overall interest of containing covid spread.

TMCs at GP level are doing a great job in containing the spread. 95 percent of our positive cases are from quarantine centers. This shows the robustness of our system and the efforts put by sarpanches, peoples representatives and the entire government machinery from top to bottom cutting across departments.I appreciate each one of you for working day and night in our fight agianst covid.

The humane work done by police in ensuring ZERO WALKING INSIDE Odisha is praise worthy. Good job done.

As I always say its a long drawn fight and so far we have handled it well and we are restrategising our approach based on new learnings. The efforts to do small certification courses for persons in quarantine will help us handle the situation even more efficiently in future.

With opening up of flights and railways the coming 15 days to a month will be more challenging but I am sure we will handle the same in a professional manner with a human face.

My special appreciation for all those who handled Covid-19 on one hand and a super cyclone on the other hand and ensured zero casualty, restored road connectivity in 24 hrs and power connectivity in 48 hrs. People of state have sacrificed so much in all these and cooperated completely with government. Their sacrifice is the inspiration for us to run the extra mile in discharging our duty.

Jai Jagannath