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Updated: Apr 21, 2020 12:04 IST

With 10 people from Bhadrak and Jajpur districts with travel history to Kolkata testing positive for Covid-19 on Monday, Odisha recorded 18 such cases on a single day. This forced the Naveen Patnaik government to rush rapid response teams there to oversee measures to contain the spread of the virus while asking people with travel history to West Bengal during last 28 days to quarantine themselves at home.

Eighteen Covid-19 positive patients were detected in Odisha till late Monday night, taking total number of cases to 79. Previously, 15 cases were detected on April 3 and 18 on April 5, most of them from Bhubaneswar. On Monday night, five more people, including a 12-year-old boy, were tested positive in Balasore town that is now emerging as a Covid-19 hotspot. The five are family members of the 58-year-old man of Balasore who had tested positive on April 18.

Odisha health and family welfare department officials said the 10 workers of Jajpur and Bhadrak districts, who had tested positive, were working in West Bengal and had returned to Odisha in the last 28 days evading the lockdown by travelling in small vehicles or goods train and other means. Chief spokesperson of state government on Covid-19, Subroto Bagchi, said 24 of the 74 cases in Odisha had travel history to West Bengal, that has of late become a hotspot. In Kolkata, 54 new cases were reported on Monday.

Five people from Bhadrak, aged between 48 years and 66 years, had slipped through the Odisha-Bengal border between March 28 and April 9. Quarantined in their homes, they were all asymptomatic till they tested positive on Monday. Similarly, another five people of Jajpur district, aged between 28 years and 64 years, working as labourers in Howrah and Burrabazar area, too had returned from Kolkata in the last 28 days.

Jajpur district collector Ranjan Das said one of the five Covid-19 patients detected in Bhadrak had travelled with five people from Jajpur in a van while they were returning from Kolkata on March 29. As the five got down at Sathipur on March 30 morning, the district collector appealed to residents of villages situated adjacent to Sathipur to inform the officials if anyone with travel history to Kolkata had reached the villages after March 30 morning.

“Most people from West Bengal are clandestinely trying to sneak into the villages. It’s not possible for the state administration and police to keep watch on every village. So the grampanchayats are extremely important in detection of potential Covid cases,” a health department press release said.

A senior police official said though every effort is being made to seal the Odisha-Bengal border, many people were crossing over to Odisha in ambulances. Though all modes of passenger transport services have been suspended for over a week in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, a large number of people have been entering Odisha by smallers roads connecting the two states through private vehicles like cars, auto-rickshaw, mini-buses and trucks.

“We have little way of knowing how many of them are genuine. Instead of going to hospitals in Kolkata, many of the patients from Bengal’s Midnapore district are flooding AIIMS Bhubaneswar and SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack. They may prove to be the greatest source of infection,” said the official. An AIIMS official said in the last one week, the number of patients from Bengal have gone up.

With more and more people from Bengal entering Odisha through numerous roads, Odisha DGP Abhay today visited the Odisha-Bengal border in Balasore an Mayurbhanj district on Tuesday to oversee the police arrangements of sealing the border. Odisha has 38 villages that share the border with Bengal. Of the 38 villages, 35 are in Balasore and rest in Mayurbhanj district.

Meanwhile, in Balasore district, a two-year-old tribal girl tested positive, making her the youngest Covid-19 patient in the state. The girl in Nilagiri block was running fever and had cold following which she was taken to the district headquarters hospital in Balasore where her swab sample was taken. Officials said they were intrigued by the girl’s case as she did not have any travel history.