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The district administration of Assam’s Kokrajhar have started random swab sampling of prisoners and jail staff to check spread of COVID-19 pandemic in Kokrajhar jail from Wednesday.

Talking to reporters in Kokrajhar on Wednesday, additional deputy commissioner of Kokrajhar, Pranjal Das said the exercise was started on Wednesday.

He also said that the random swab sampling of all the 326 male and female jail inmates and staff of Kokrajhar jail will be done in a phased manner and they have been kept in isolation till the collection of their report.

Sailen Dutta Das, ADC, said as per direction from the joint secretary to Assam Government, Home and Political department (vide letter no HMB.S9/2020/146, dt. 13/7/2020), the district administration, Kokrajhar, in coordination with office of joint director, Health services, arranged swab collection of the jail officials and jail inmates of district jail Kokrajhar.

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At present, there are 326 jail inmates in the jail which include 282 male and 44 female inmates.

Along with them, swab tests were also conducted for 22 jail officials/staff.

The drive will take a week to complete the entire process.

He said to contain the spread of coronavirus among jail inmates this drive has been conducted.

He also said the Jail authority has also endeavoured to implement social distance amongst the inmates and swab test collection will continue till all the inmates are covered.

Rinoy Basumatary is Northeast Now Correspondent in Kokrajhar. He can be reached at: [email protected]