COVID Showing Steady Rise in Kashmir; Five more Srinagar areas declared containment zones
In view of the continuous surge in the daily reported cases of Covid19, the district administration on Tuesday declared five more areas in Srinagar as containment zones.
The public movement in these areas has been disallowed as a preventive measure to control the virus.
The areas include one Yateem Trust, one Factory, Nowpora at Khanyar, Sheikh Faisal colony at Bachpora, and Sheikh Hamza Colony Lal Bazar.
“We have also sealed five shops in downtown and uptown areas of Srinagar as we found the COVID19 SoPs were not being followed inside these shops,” Sub Divisional Magistrate (SDM) Srinagar Owais Ahmad said. Ahmad is also the nodal officer for the Covid19 management in the district.
The decision to declare containment zones was taken by the administration after taking a review of the rising cases of Covid19 in these areas. The manpower has been deployed in these areas to prevent public movement and subsequently, barricades will be erected at the entry and exit points as well.
Meanwhile, the administration on Tuesday also registered nine FIRs under section 108 against the shopkeepers who, according to officials, were repeated violators.
“We had warned these shopkeepers earlier to adhere to covid19 SoPs inside their shops but they were repeatedly found violating the SoPs so we registered FIRs against the proprietors of these shops,” Nodal officer for Covid19 management told Kashmir Post.
As already reported, there were around 88 containment zones in the Srinagar district out of which 22 were active containment zones. On Tuesday five more areas were added to the list of the active containment zones.
The Srinagar administration has collected Rs 15000 fine from the violators from the Srinagar district who were caught without wearing face masks.
Meanwhile, there is good and not-so-good news on the Covid front in Kashmir. The not-so-good news is that virus infection is showing a steady rise in the last fortnight with Srinagar accounting for more than half of the Covid positive cases. The good news is that four out of five people in Kashmir have developed antibodies to cope with the disease.
On Monday, Srinagar had 48 positive cases out of 78 in the entire Kashmir. The five-day figures in Srinagar against Kashmir read like this. 41 to 89, 72 to 141, 80 to 150, and 80 to 147, respectively. The number of active cases till Monday in Srinagar and 10 districts of Kashmir Valley was clocked as 604 to 1035, the Srinagar district accounting for more than 50 percent. The fatalities in Srinagar are only 37 percent only; 837 people from Srinagar have died out of 2,246 in the entire Valley, though some of the fatalities can be travelers and non Srinagarites.
The Jammu district shares the highest number of casualties at 1,142, almost 300 more than Srinagar, perhaps indicative of the fact that healthcare is better in Srinagar than Jammu as many experts had stated earlier.
Following the spike, the district administration in Srinagar has notified around 21 micro containment zones and sealed these areas as per the Covid protocols.
