Nearly 20,000 Chhattisgarh villages now coronavirus-free: Govt

Raipur, May 27: Nearly half of over 20,000 villages in Chhattisgarh have become coronavirus-free, the state government claimed on Thursday.

Measures such as reactivation of quarantine centres as soon as the second wave of the pandemic began helped and now 9,462 out of 20,092 villages do not have a single active COVID-19 patient, an official statement said.

As the cases began to surge in urban areas, Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel instructed officials to take every possible measure to curb the spread in rural areas, it said.

Quarantine centers established during the first wave last year were reactivated with better infrastructure and those returning from other states or cities were compulsorily isolated in these centres.

Village-level health staff including Mitanins'' or women health workers as well as teachers conducted door-to- door surveys to look for infected persons, the statement said.

New labs were established to increase the coronavirus testing capacity and now around 70,000 samples are being tested in the state daily against around 22,000 earlier, it said.

The number of beds in district hospitals has been increased and new COVID Care Centers have been set up in villages, the statement added.

As many as 402 of 957 villages in Baloda Bazar district, 311 of 702 villages in Bemetara, 491 of 579 villages in Bijapur, 158 of 229 villages of Dantewada, 377 of 385 villages in Durg, 342 of 722 villages in Gariband, 792 out of 1,084 villages in Kanker, 832 out of 1,035 villages in Kabirdham, 407 of 569 villages in Kondagaon, 352 out of 638 villages of Koriya, 362 of 422 villages in Narayanpur and 1,204 out of 1,599 villages in Rajnandgaon are now coronavirus-free, among others, the statement said.

Chhattisgarh's coronavirus caseload rose to 9,59,544 on Wednesday with addition of 2,829 cases, while the death toll increased by 56 to 12,779.