Jhapa, June 22

Kankai Municipality has sealed the entire municipality area for five days fearing possible spread of COVID-19 infection in the community in Jhapa.

A meeting held in the municipality today decided to seal the municipality vicinity till June 27. In a notice, the municipality has appealed to municipality residents to close down everything, except health service.

A 31-year-old woman staying in the quarantine of Dalit Building at Durgapur was diagnosed with COVID-19 today. The woman had returned home from Kuwait on June 14. Ever since, the woman is in the quarantine.

The municipality feared the infection might have spread in the community after it came to light that a child and relatives had spent a few hours with the woman before they left the quarantine.

The municipality has sealed all wards 1 to 7 to stop the possible spread of COVID-19. “We decided to seal the municipality to carry out contact tracing of people who came in contact with the quarantined woman,” said Mayor Rajendra Kumar Pokhrel.

A version of this article appears in e-paper on June 23, 2020, of The Himalayan Times.