Our Reporter
Dimapur, June 4 (EMN): The Tuensang district task force (DTF) along with tribal leaders, student bodies and NGOs have decided to extend facility quarantine to 28 days instead of 14 for those returning to the district from Kohima.
This was confirmed to Eastern Mirror by Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Tuensang, Kumar Ramnikant on Thursday evening.
“Many homes in villages will find it difficult to cater to a home quarantine returnee as more than one person shares a bedroom or bathroom; it won’t be possible to segregate at home,” said Ramnikant.
When asked about the resources available to cater to returnees for 28 days, the DC informed that financial assistance would be sought through ‘crowd funding, donation drives and the likes’.
50 samples sent for retesting
Chingmak Kumchuba, the president of the Confederation of Chang Students’ Union (CCSU), also spoke to this newspaper and informed that 50 throat swab samples collected from the Tuensang returnees were sent on Thursday to Kohima for retesting.
“Contact tracing of the five positive cases from Tuensang were done so those samples have been sent today,” informed Kumchuba.
If any of the samples are tested positive, they will be sent to the Covid-19 hospital for isolation while the rest will still be under facility quarantine for 28 days.
“If we don’t quarantine the returnees for 28 days, it will pose as a bigger threat to the community,” said Kumchuba.
He further informed that two TrueNat testing machines will arrive in the district in few days.
“Once the TrueNat machines arrive, we can speed up the testing and be more systematic as well,” shared Kumchuba.
According to the Tuensang district administration, monetary donations to fund the quarantine centre for an extra 14 days can be sent to the account of Tuensang Covid-19 relief fund.