Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): At least 48 police personnel, including senior officials, have tested positive for Covid-19 in Bhopal in the past one and a half week, officials said.
According to Bhopal Police, majority of the Covid positive personnel are from special armed forces. Of them, seven are serving in district police force and two are Additional Commissioner of Police (ACPs) of the traffic department.
In many cases, family members of the Covid infected police officers have also tested positve.
The district police has, therefore, directed officials to strictly follow Covid protection norms and asked them to maintain social distancing during field work.
The Additional Commissioner of Police (Bhopal), Sachin Atulkar said: "The cops are advised to be careful while going home after field work and follow Covid norms to keep their families safe. Police stations are being sanitised daily and other Covid protection norms are being followed strictly to ensure the safety of people personnel as well as the general public."
Bhopal district police have set up a special control room to communicate with Covid infected cops and to monitor their health conditions regularly and reach out to them, if needed.
Most of these cops are recovering under home isolation.
As of now, no quarantine centre has been set up specially for the police, however, the system would be in place soon.
Madhya Pradesh is witnessing an exponential growth in daily Covid-19 cases over the last one week and on Wednesday a total of 3,639 new infections were reported.
In the last 12 days, the state has registered a total of 16,741 Covid infections, majority of them in Indore and Bhopal.
However, other districts such as Gwalior, Ujjain, Jabalpur and Sagar have also witnessed a surge.
The positivity rate, which was below 1 per cent on January 1, jumped to 4.5 per cent by Wednesday.
