SHILLONG, January 18: Prestone Tynsong, the Deputy Chief Minister of Meghalaya said that the Government up to this point has no intention of imposing a lockdown but if the positivity rate goes up to 40 or 50 percent, then that will pose a danger and lockdown will a measure resorted to if no other option is available anymore. He said that at present the Government has applied stringent restrictions especially on those arriving from outside the State by insisting on mandatory testing and allowing only those with an RTPCR negative report valid for 72 hours to enter the State.
The positivity rate of Covid-19 in the state has been rapidly rising in the past few days and the active cases at present stand at 1318 with 275 new patients testing positive for the virus today.
On being asked, Tynsong said that the Government in order to curb the spread of the virus has utilised every government employee from almost every department and deployed them to urban and rural areas to spread the awareness on the importance of vaccination. He said that while all over India the positivity rates have increased yet severe illness and deaths have been prevented due to vaccination.
The Deputy Chief Minister further stated that the Government has also taken several other precautionary measures to curb the spread of the virus by imposing new standard operating protocols for the public to follow especially for the people coming from outside the state. He said that the number of vaccinated people in the state has also increased in the past few weeks.
