Amid the raising coronavirus cases in the city, a major challenge that has emerged for officials has been enforcing the strict quarantine.
After the inter-state and inter-district travel has opened up, the city has seen a massive influx of population coming in and thereby increasing the number of cases. Currently, the city of Bengaluru has over 56,000 people under home quarantine. However, not every one of them follows the guidelines completely. 13,000 people have been warned of violating quarantine rules and three have actually been taken into institutional quarantine. As per health officials, the three people have breached the rules 153 times.
As per Captain Manivannan who is the special officer in charge of the home quarantine task force, there were 6,000 home quarantine breaches on Friday and over 13,000 in the last one week. He also revealed that at least 100 anonymous reports were filed for conducting mass gatherings and FIRs have been lodged in the matter. According to him, most of them violate the rules primarily because they are worried about running out of supplies. He said,
“When there were containment zones clearly demarcated, people would get their daily essentials through BBMP. But ever since the lockdown restrictions were eased, people are moving around freely and this has added to a rise in cases.”
Another reason for a spike in cases has been interstate travelers roaming around the city and infecting others. As per a survey from the health department, the biggest cluster of asymptomatic carriers is the inter-state and inter-district travelers.
Revision of Quarantine Rules
The state has also revised its quarantine rules for inter-state passengers. Earlier, for passengers coming into the state from Delhi and Tamil Nadu was made to undergo a mandatory Institutional quarantine of 3 days. This has now been waived off. However, the 7-day Institutional quarantine for Maharashtra returnees to continue as it was earlier. The Maharashtra returnees are also required to undergo another week of home quarantine. Revising the rules, now people coming in from all the states except Maharashtra are required to undergo 14 days of home quarantine.
Upon entering the city, they are made to install and register on the Quarantine watch app where they can be tracked in real-time.
Source: The Times of India
