In Chhattisgarh, nearly half of all villages are free of the Coronavirus: state government

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.