At the time when Country plans to loosen lockdown despite record rise in corona cases, Jharkhand too has witnessed jump in cases in last few days due to influx of migrant workers in State. More and more areas, including VIP areas, are now in grip of infection.
On Sunday, an official working at Indian Institute of Management-Ranchi was tested positive for coronavirus. The campus, which is temporarily being run at ‘Soochna Bhawan’ near Raj Bhavan, official residence of Chief Minister Hemant Soren, Speaker and also includes the Covid-19 control room. The area also houses several other State Government offices.
State Health Secretary, Nitin Madan Kulkarni said, “A person working at Soochna Bhawan campus has been tested positive. The district administration will carry out the sanitisation of entire campus and building.” According to officials in the health department, after testing positive, the staff came forward to inform the authorities following which he was taken to an isolation ward at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi. Also the district administration is trying to find out the primary contacts of the staff for testing. On Sunday Jharkhand witnessed 16 fresh cases with this the number of Covid-19 cases has gone up to 610.
Notably, Jharkhand witnessed the highest single-day spike of 72 cases on Saturday with infection reaching to Sahibganj district too which was in the green zone till Friday. With infection reaching to Sahibganj all 24 districts in State are in grip of infection.
The migrant workers have increased the tally of coronavirus cases in Jharkhand, if the health department data is to be believed. According to the health department data till now 610 positive cases have been detected in the State. Of these, 430 are migrant labourers.
As per the data, till now 4.70 lakh migrant workers have returned to the state by trains and other means of transportation. On the initiative of State Government, migrant workers are also reaching out to State through flights.
In a first, Jharkhand Government arranged chartered flights and facilitated the return of 60 migrant workers stranded in the Balakit-Kargil sector of Ladakh. The migrants had, earlier this month, reached out to Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Twitter, following which he got in touch with the Ladakh UT local administration and asked Home Minister Amit Shah to allow the state to airlift its people from Leh.
The migrant workers reaching State are put in home or system quarantine. As per State Government figures, number of person in home quarantine is 2,89,857, while number of person who have been put up in quarantine centre is 99,641.
