BHUBANESWAR: Ganjam, the political home of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, happens to be the worst Covid-hit district in the state.
Currently, it accounts for close to 30 percent of the state’s case load. In last ten days, the numbers have more than doubled. But was it not on expected lines?
Of the 8.5 lakh Odias who headed home after the lockdown was imposed in March, Ganjam received the lion’s share.
That’s where the highest number of temporary medical camps was set up to screen the returnees. The district saw most number of senior officers deployed to oversee the Covid management.
Ganjam is where the cases continue to grow exponentially after most of the returnees completed their mandatory quarantine in the TMCs which was peddled as the successful model.
That’s where the fatalities are piling up. Why? Something is clearly missing in the plot. An analysis of how the Government has handled the health crisis might appear like an afterthought but it’s required because there are more questions that beg answers as the virus outbreak clearly has not peaked yet and the fight looks a long haul. First things first.
What’s been the Government’s testing status and strategy in Ganjam? No one knows for sure because the Government has been too reluctant to give away data.
It has followed a single line of explanation to all posers on testing: only symptomatic cases must be tested as per the ICMR guidelines.
For a district, which sends out a large population to other states in search of livelihood, a focussed Covid testing of returnees through random as well as pooled methods would have given the Government a clear advantage when the migrants returned.
Yet, it let the opportunity pass. Now, it is struggling. For a Government that had announced 15,000 tests per day from June 1, the actual numbers have been way less. Despite having adequate number of RT-PCR machines and creating testing labs way ahead of many states, it appears to have slipped up.
Ganjam also is symptomatic of the Covid management of Odisha Government whichhad declared June as the most crucial month but now seems to be all at sea. With case spiking across the state, it has very little in terms of a concrete strategy to combat the rapid rise. More than a month back, it disbanded its purchase panel on the grounds that all its procurement for Covid is over.
With cases on the rise, it has been forced to go in for buying more essentials for sero-survey and antigen tests.
It also dissolved a panel that was in charge of Covid management stating that the individual departments required attention since economy re-opening was priority too.
Earlier this week, it put IAS officer R Vineel Krishna in charge of Covid management. On March 30, it had formed a six-member strategic committee to deal with knowledge experts and technology companies to provide strategic direction for combating the pandemic.
No one knows its fate now. Going back to Ganjam, the district is represented by 13 MLAs, twelve of whom are from Biju Janata Dal. During the current crisis, 11 legislators have been absent on the ground as a leadership vacuum has emerged.
For a politically charged district, the leaders would have helped create a bridge that the masses need during such a pandemic.
Then, it has been the case across the State. In Karnataka capital Bengaluru where Covid has registered a sharp spike, the BS Yeddyurappa Government put eight ministers and eight administrators in charge of as many zones to supervise the management.
Here, the political capital has been left unused. With very little strategic action to show, individual districts and municipal corporations have been on a roll, sealing borders, prohibiting entry from one district to another.
In Bhubaneswar, the civic body detected 43 cases from a hospital and the number of contacts it traced for testing was 250. Six contacts for a positive case is clearly not aggressive testing or tracing in an urban area where local cases mount.
In Kerala, the Pinarayi Vijayan Government went in for a triple lockdown of Thiruvanthapuram giving police a key role in management.
Here, police has little role to play apartment from enforcing face mask and social distancing violation enforcement.
As things today, Odisha Government appears confused and seems to be missing the forest for the trees.
Antibody survery starts in Bhubaneswar
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Saturday rolled out the first serial sero-survey in Bhubaneswar, a Covid hotspot of the State. The exercise is being undertaken to ascertain whether there is any community transmission of Covid-19 in the Capital city along with the extent of the spread of the virus in the population. Five teams from the Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC) here collected the blood samples of people in different identified clusters using multistage random sampling method
All ICU beds occupied in Bhubaneswar
Odisha on Saturday reported 570 new Covid-19 cases, taking the total to 12,526, and six deaths. The State had reported first 5,000 cases and 15 deaths in about 100 days, but has added 5,210 cases and 36 deaths in the last 10 days. Although the State Government continues to deny community transmission, virologists begged to differ as one-third people without having any travel history were infected during a short span of time