As seven persons of the Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district in Punjab tested positive for the COVID-19 on Sunday taking the tally to 21, the State government ordered a lock down, effective March 23 till March 31 as an emergency measure to tackle the worsening situation.
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One of the seven persons is from Amritsar, who returned from the U.K., according to the Health department.
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh tweeted that the lock down had been ordered to check the spread of the virus. “All essential government services will continue and shops selling essential items such as milk, food items and medicines etc will be open. All Deputy Commissioners and Senior SPs have been directed to implement the restrictions immediately,” he said.
The lock down would start from 6 am on March 23 and will remain in force till 9 am on March 31. There will be no curfew but restrictions under Section 144 shall remain in force. Hence, more than 10 persons should not get together at any public space at any given time, it said.
“The seven people who tested positive had been in close contact with the 70-year-old man of Pathlawa village in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar, who died last week and tested positive for the virus,” Dr. Rajinder Bhatia, civil surgeon, S.B.S Nagar, told The Hindu .
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“Three of them are family members of the deceased, one is a close contact from the same village and two others travelled along with him from Germany via Italy,” said Dr. Bhatia.
He said samples of all patients were sent to the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh. “The report confirmed all patients are COVID-19 positive. All of them are stable,” he said.
The police registered an FIR under 188 CRPC against Arun Sharma, a resident of Dhariwal in Gurdaspur district, who had come from Brazil. He is accused of not following the instructions to quarantine himself at home for 15 days.
Most public places in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh wore a deserted look amid the janata curfew proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Shops and commercial establishments were mostly closed and little vehicular movement was seen on the roads. People were largely seen preferring to stay indoors with only a few venturing out.
