New Delhi, Aug 27, 2020: Five members of the Great Andamanese tribe have tested positive for Covid-19.

“We have shifted all the five to an isolation facility in Port Blair. Of these five persons, four are male and one female,” Avijit Roy, Nodal officer for COVID-19 and Deputy Director (Health), Directorate of Health Services, Port Blair, told The Hindu on August 27 when India completed 157 days of lockdown.

Great Andamanese are one of five Particularly Vulnerable Tribal group ( PVTG) living in Andamans archipelago.

Roy says the infected tribal people “are cooperating with us and are not showing any serious health complications.”

Health officials say the Andaman tribals would have contracted the virus from travelers to Port Blair and Strait Island to do odd jobs.

Meanwhile India registered more than 75,000 COVID-19 cases for the first time in a span of 24 hours. The new cases made India’s virus tally to sprint past 3.3 million, while the number of recoveries crossed the 2.5 million mark, according to the federal Health Ministry data.

In Delhi, Police Commissioner S N Shrivastava has instructed hi force to strictly implement necessary guidelines to prevent the spread of virus. The police chief is concerned over the rise in cases of Covid-19 in the Delhi police department.

A senior police officer said that the police force is witnessing around 20 cases daily. More than 2,500 policemen have tested positive and 15 have succumbed to the virus so far.

On August 23, Shrivastava, via videoconference, instructed all police personnel to revisit the circular and implement it completely.

In May, Shrivastava had issued a circular to all district DCPs and police heads of other units. As per the circular, all police personnel should wear masks and gloves and disinfect weapons, dragon light, computers and printers. Barracks at police stations should be sanitized on a daily basis.

The circular reads that each group should be appropriately rotated in a manner that 15-20 percent staffer is always on quarantine for a fixed period and available for duties any time, as per requirement.

In Kerala, poor maintenance of registers at shops hits contact tracing.

Though most shops in Ernakulam have kept registers at their entrances, some customers enter the shops without writing down their personal details.

The practice of keeping registers at shop entrances to record details of customers for possible contact tracing seems to have lost steam, with several traders finding it difficult to ensure compliance.

With merchants trying to cash in on Onam sales, the sight of visitors entering shops without providing their names, contact numbers, and places of stay has become common in Ernakulam. A major chunk of traders had started maintaining registers after the authorities tightened vigil in the wake of the worsening COVID-19 situation. However, shop owners now cite logistical hurdles and manpower shortage as reasons for failure to ensure compliance.

“We can only hope that customers cooperate with us by entering their contact details properly in the registers. Only a few bother to do so,” said a retailer at Aluva.

Traders pointed out that continued monitoring required additional manpower, which was not practical amid the festival season business.

“Sales have already been hit by the pandemic crisis, and we cannot deploy people exclusively to ensure maintenance of registers,” said the manager of a bakery outlet at Edappally.

Source: The Hindu