COVID-19: Ongole City Staring At Re-Imposition Of Full Lockdown For 14 Days

ONGOLE: Battling the coronavirus menace, the Prakasam district authorities in Andhra Pradesh appear to be drawomg inspiration from their Chittoor counterparts, who have clamped a full lockdown in the temple town of Tirupati. With coronavirus pandemic showing no signs of receding and COVID-19 cases increasing by the day, the Prakasam district administration is gearing up to re-impose a complete lockdown in the district headquarter city of Ongole.

To break the chain of the virus spread here, the official machinery intends to strictly enforce the lockdown restrictions and it finds a re-enforcement of a full lockdown as the only viable option for this. Though, the date for this has not yet been finalized, it is widely expected that orders imposing a complete lockdown once again would be issued in the next two or three days. Like in the case of Tirupati, a two-week stricter enforcement of lockdown is expected to be on the cards for the Prakasam authorities.

As part of the tightened regulations, shops selling essential commodities will be allowed to be open only for three hours in the morning between 6 and 9 am. Medical shops and petrol bunks will however be exempted from this total shutdown. The authorities are determined to implement the lockdown rules with a firm hand as the general public is found to be not taking the safety guidelines seriously. In the last few weeks, the authorities have stumbled on several instances of people’s negligence in adhering to the COVID-19 norms like avoiding social gatherings, wearing face masks when they venture out and insensitiveness towards the use of sanitisers.

Ongole town has seen a spurt in the number of coronavirus cases in the last few weeks. While the official figures put it at more than 1,000 cases, unofficially, it is believed to have gone past 2,000 cases in the city alone. This has prompted the authorities to declare the entire city as a containment zone. The state of the pandemic has escalated to the dangerous third stage in the city. Alarmed by this trend, the district authorities have decided to go in for a fresh full lockdown in the city.