Covid-19: Assam to unlock partially, says Himanta Biswa Sarma

GUWAHATI: Assam will not follow the Unlock 3 guidelines from August 1 in entirety but go for partial implementation to keep the Covid-19 situation under control and attempt to flatten the curve by mid-August, state health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.
The ministry of home affairs on Wednesday announced the unlock 3 guidelines to allow re-opening of more activities outside containment zones, but the state is in favour of continuing with many of the lockdown restrictions.
Sarma on Thursday said, “The Covid-19 situation in Assam has started improving and we think that till August 15, we will have limited application of the MHA unlock guidelines—it will be something like a situation between lockdown and unlocking.”
Sarma explained, “We want to continue with some restrictions, at least till August 15 because we do not want to lose our grip on the situation, which is improving. Our testing is very encouraging and we can maintain the current testing trend, we might be able to flatten the Covid-19 curve by August 15.”
With a surge in Covid cases, the state government shutdown the state from June 28 to July 12, which was extended by two more weeks till July 26. The unlocking with night curfew from 6 pm to 6 am started from July 27 and the situation will be reviewed on August 2 for further action.
Sarma said that the state government has also readied an SOP for re-opening of educational institutes as and when the centre list the curbs on it.
“Centre has announced yesterday that educational institutes will remain closed till August 31. If the centre allows re-opening of schools and colleges from September 1, we would also want to follow suit and so we have already prepared the SOP,” Sarma said.
Sarma informed that on Thursday, 4267 tests have been completed in Guwahati where a community targeted and voluntary testing exercise is on at collection centres in 60 area sabhas, at specially set up Covid Counselling centres in each of 31 municipality wards apart from the designated hospitals.
Sarma added that from the first level of test by rapid antigen test (RAT), out of the 4267 tests, 196 have tested positive while from the remaining 4071 negative tests which were subjected to repeat test by RT-PCR, 1126 samples tested positive.