Shopian: Shopian has seen no fresh case for last five days giving respite to administration as well as frontline workers combating Covid-19.
The south Kashmir district saw 73 from single village Hirpora causing massive panic among locals. A total of 109 cases were reported in district but so far 98 have recovered reducing the number of active cases to 11.
Chief medical officer Shopian Dr Ramesh attributes decline in cases to frontline workers and administration for aggressive tracing and testing which helped to contain the spread of the infection.
He said that they faced a huge challenge when two infants aged nine and 11 months old tested Covid positive. “We were forced to put mother with one baby and his mother also turned positive,” he said and added “all of them recovered”.
“We are satisfied with the situation now. From community spread to no cases now in Hirpora, credit goes to frontline workers and civil administration who helped us to contain the situation,” he added.
Dr Ramesh said that over 40,00 tests were carried out in the district. “Since last five days, we have not reported any local case. However, a few which were reported are drivers and labourers who travelled from other states to Kashmir recently,” he said.
Dr Muhammad Yousuf Naikoo, who is Block medical officer and a front line official, said that they used to conduct meetings on every day to trace suspects, conduct tests and trace contacts. “In Bemnipora village, we even traced the persons who lives one kilometre from the positive case and has no contact with him but the said person had offered Nimaz after four hours where the positive case had offered earlier,” he said.
Naikoo said that the reason behind the increase in cases earlier were travellers who hid their travel history and went into hiding.
“We conducted aggressive awareness programmes and door-to-door health survey which helped us to both educate people and now people report to authorities without any delay to help us to stop the spread of virus,” he said.

Raashid Hassan