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Updated: Apr 24, 2020 09:40 IST

The Odisha government on Thursday announced a 60-hour shutdown in three of its districts where around 3000 people moved in from neighbouring West Bengal, now emerging a Covid-19 hotspot, defying lockdown measures.

Chief secretary Asit Tripathy said the shutdown in coastal Balasore and Bhadrak districts and Jajpur district would begin from 10pm on Thursday with state health officials increasing testing of all primary and secondary contacts of the 33 coronavirus disease (Covid-19) patients.

Till Thursday, Odisha recorded 89 cases of the infection.

No vehicles or people would be allowed on the roads during the 60 hours except ambulances and inter-state goods vehicles.

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Tripathy said 28 of the 29 cases were reported from Balasore, Bhadrak and Jajpur in the past five days forcing the government to move to a higher level of preparedness in these districts.

Though Bhubaneswar has recorded 46, the highest number of cases in the state, it has not reported a single one since April 14 after the government contained several areas and did aggressive testing.

“We hope to do a similar kind of exercise in these districts with aggressive tracing and testing,” he said.

The state government also deployed three senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers in these districts to augment testing and tracing.

Since Wednesday, the government has sealed the Odisha borders connecting West Bengal at Balasore and Mayurbhanj districts barricading about 57 roads.

It also deployed 27 platoons of the police force on these routes and turned back several ambulances at an inter-state check gate that were on their way to Odisha.

Also read: Popular Odia comedian takes to selling vegetables to support kin amid lockdown

The travel history of the Covid-19 patients in Bhadrak and Jajpur showed they travelled from West Bengal in fishing trucks, small vans and other such vehicles evading the lockdown measures. In Jajpur district alone, 700 people had walked their way from the neighbouring state in the last one month.

On Thursday morning too, a container truck illegally carrying 11 people from West Bengal to Bhubaneswar was intercepted at Ranital area of Bhadrak on NH-16. However, the vehicle managed to slip through before police could reach the spot.

Meanwhile, the state government’s high-level inter-ministerial committee on the coronavirus pandemic decided to increase testing to 3000 samples per day by the end of this month. So far, 15,984 samples had been tested.

Currently, the state is conducting more than 2000 Covid-19 tests per day.

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After the inter-ministerial meeting, panchayati raj and housing and urban and rural development minister Pratap Jena said the state will conduct the tests once laboratories at the four medical college and hospitals in Balangir, Balasore, Baripada and Koraput and at Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology become functional.

Health minister Naba Kishore Das said the Odisha government will suggest the Centre for conducting Covid-19 test of migrant labourers of the state who are stranded in other parts of the country due to the lockdown.