Leh: With strict containment measures in place to lock down “red zones” with total restriction of people’s movement, the Union Territory of Ladakh has done well to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic as two more persons have recovered from the disease.
With this, the number of recovered persons in one of the most sparsely populated regions in the country goes up to 11, officials said on Wednesday.
Ladakh reported the first case of coronavirus on March 6 and the count increased to 13 by March 21. Some good news came on March 23 when two of the patients were discharged after their fresh samples tested negative twice as per the set protocol, the officials said.
Later, the number of positive cases went up to 14 when another person was tested positive on April 2. Two days later, six more patients were declared recovered.
On March 26, a patient had recovered while another person was tested negative on Tuesday was discharged from hospital, the officials said.
At present, only three patients from Kargil are still under treatment in the twin districts of the UT, the officials said, adding that all the 11 patients who recovered were from Leh.
The government machinery screened 32,108 people for the disease since January 31 this year.
Those who were screened included 160 pilgrims who had returned from Iran and 532 other foreign returnees, the officials said.
Several villages, that are home to people who returned from Iran, were completely put under lockdown as deployment of police force restricted their movement for over a month that helped containing the spread of the virus, they said.
As many as 2,808 people were placed under quarantine with 1,989 of them having completed the 14-day period. The number of people under surveillance was 1,702 with 287 of them having been released after completing the 28-day period of quarantine and surveillance.
