Gurugram: Khandsa vegetable wholesale market to remain closed for four days

gurugram: A spate of COVID-19 cases reported from Khandsa Vegetable wholesale Market has resulted in the Gurugram district administration closing it for four days from May 5 to May 8. It has also been announced that other vegetable wholesale markets in Pataudi, Farrukh Nagar and Nuh will also remain closed.

More than 1,400 vendors are now being screened to examine whether they possess the symptoms of COVID-19. Nine out of 11 cases of Coronavirus that were reported from the district on Monday were from Khandsa.

According to officials, the infection was contracted by the vegetable vendors who had recently purchased inventories from Azadpur mandi (Delhi), Nashik (Maharashtra) and even West Bengal.

Another vegetable vendor who was infected with COVID-19 in Nuh was also getting his vegetable inventories from Azadpur mandi, which according to health officials may be the source.

Barring vegetable vendors, the health officials are also trying to get in touch with the consumers who had come to the Khandsa wholesale market to buy vegetables. The health officials acknowledged that it will be an onerous task to identify those people who bought vegetables from the infected vendors.

Recently, the district administration had prohibited the functioning of Gurugram's largest wholesale market following reports of large number of people coming to buy vegetable and thereby violating the norms of social distancing. Later shops were being allowed to function on alternate days.

There are 119 large and 83 small shops that operate from Khandsa vegetable market.

One of the major sources behind the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in Jhajjar and Sonipat was vegetable vendors, who had done transactions in Azadpur wholesale market.

"We have sealed the Khandsa wholesale market and have begun the sanitisation process. We also have to screen thousands of vendors. There has been an increase in number of cases as we are focused on undertaking targeted sampling of different groups which have exposure to local positive cases," said a senior official from Gurugram district administration.