SHILLONG, April 21: The Health department is contemplating to carry out a case study after 120 people were tested positive for the COVID-19 in a cluster of villages under Darrang in West Jaintia Hills bordering Bangladesh.
Stating that they are treating a woman from Ri Bhoi who attended a funeral at Darrang village as the index case, a senior Health official said that they will need to find out how such a large number of people were tested positive.
According to him, there are strong possibilities that people might have contracted the virus in view of the huge inflow of tourists in the area.
“We are all aware that Shnongpdeng has become one of the major tourist destinations. Tourists from across India are visiting Shnongpdeng. We strongly suspect that the virus might have spread from the visiting tourists,” the official said.
According to another official, there are also looking at the possibilities that the virus might have spread from across the border. He observed that large numbers of people of the area are directly in contact with people from Bangladesh due to export and import activities especially with the Land Custom Station (LCS) being located in Dawki.
“We cannot rule out anything as of now. But we are pretty sure that the woman from Ri Bhoi has not spread the virus. We suspect that she must have contracted the virus after interacting with the people from this area,” he said.
Meanwhile, a senior government official informed that the situation in the affected villages was under control. “We are not getting any more fresh positive cases. The containment of at least four of the villages is likely to be lifted by Thursday due to the improvement in the situation,” he informed.
Earlier, many of villages like Shnongpdeng, Darrang, Kongwang, Bakur and Dawki had been declared as containment zones in view of the rise in the number of positive cases.
