Biswanath administration lays emphasis on generating awareness to fight COVID

A CORRESPONDENT

BISWANATH CHARIALI: With COVID-19 cases steadily increasing in the district, Biswanath administration has zeroed in on the fact that without wholehearted support from the people, no amount of effort of the civil or police administration would fetch desired result. Hence, the administration has decided to vigorously launch COVID awareness programmes and meets throughout the nook and corners of the district to make masses aware of the disease and the precautions and appropriate COVID behavior they are required to follow.

All the administrative officers have been instructed to regularly visit villages and tea estates and hold awareness meets with the local populace. Biswanath Deputy Commissioner (DC) Pranab Kumar Sarmah too has been holding such meetings where he has been appealing to the people not to take the virus lightly and to strictly follow all COVID rules and protocols. "The COVID pandemic is an emergency situation. We will have to anyhow bring the situation under control, however, no amount of effort of the administration will yield any result until masses themselves join this fight voluntarily. Hence, we have decided to generate awareness among masses and apprise them the seriousness of the situation so that they wholeheartedly engage themselves in this fight against COVID -19," said the Deputy Commissioner.

Besides holding awareness meets and programmes by officers of the district administration, several Task Forces too have been formed at Panchayat levels involving civil society, self-help groups, gaon burhas and naamghars with the purpose of generating awareness at micro level. Regular meetings are also being held with the Panchayat and Rural Development (P&RD) department on how to involve the masses in this fight. Simultaneously, the district administration too is concentrating on vigorous testing so that infected persons could be soon identified and isolated.

"The more we test, the more we will be able to isolate the infected persons. And the faster we can identify and isolate the infected persons, sooner we will be able to stem the spread of the virus," added Sarmah.

On Friday, 42 new positive cases were detected in the district, which took the total number of active cases in Biswanath to 568.

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