COVID-19: IB office in Bhubaneswar sealed, employees put under home quarantine

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has sealed the office of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) here and put all its employees under home quarantine after it was found that one of the staff of the central agency had come in contact with a COVID-19 patient, an official said on Tuesday.

The civic body officials put up a notice on the wall of the IB Office located at RN Singhdeo Marg in the city, he said.

The IB office has been sealed for a period of 14 days from April 6 to April 19, 2020, and nobody is allowed to enter the premises, the BMC official said. Sources said that one of the employees of the IB office had come in contact with a COVID-19 patient of Surya Nagar area in the state capital.

The Surya Nagar area has been declared as a "containment zone" after eight novel coronavirus cases were reported from the locality. The civic body has made an elaborate arrangement to sanitise the R N Singhdeo Marg area including the IB Colony, the official said. "All employees have been kept under home quarantine and their swab samples sent for testing," BMC Commissioner Prem Chandra Chaudhary said.

Apart from Surya Nagar, the BMC has notified Bomikhal, Kapila Prasad, Jadupur and Begunia areas as "containment zones" for aggressive surveillance. Similarly, the district administration of Kendrapara on Tuesday sealed 11 villages in Aul area as a preventive measure after a 32-year-old man with a travel history to Dubai tested positive for COVID-19.

Kendrapara district collector Samarth Verma said the public movement in the villages has been restricted and sanitisation exercise will be taken up in these areas. He, however, said there is no need to panic for the sanitisation process as the district administration will continue to provide essential items to each household.

The fresh COVID-19 patient from Kendrapara district has been admitted to a hospital in Cuttack and samples of his family members have been collected for test, he said. All his family members have been put in-home quarantine, Verma added.

This apart, the administration has also sealed several localities in Cuttack, Jajpur, and Puri districts and declared these areas as containment zones, the official said.