Coming 15 days will be more challenging: Naveen

Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday said the coming 15 days will be more challenging to contain the spread of Coronavirus in the state.

“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,” said the Chief Minister.

He reviewed the Covid-19 situation in the state.

“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,” he added.

“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,” said Patnaik.

“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,” he further said.

He said 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,” said the Chief Minister.

Informing that TMCs at GP level are doing a great job in containing the spread of Covid-19, he said 95 percent of positive cases are from quarantine centers.

“This shows the robustness of our system and the efforts put by sarpanches, people’s 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,” he said.

The Chief Minister also appreciated the humane work done by police in ensuring ZERO WALKING INSIDE Odisha.