Virus breaching all barriers in state
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: May 15, 2021 -

WITH deaths and infections continuing unabated for over a fortnight now, Manipur's coronavirus situation definitely merits serious introspection by the government authorities to initiate firm preventive measures on a war footing.

Compared to the first wave of Covid-19 exposing infrastructure inadequacies in public hospitals in the twin capital districts and incompatibility of district hospitals to handle medical crisis of such a proportion, the virus' onslaught in the second wave has been consistently showing that mere testing of suspected cases will not be enough to break the chain of transmission.

Ever since the pandemic broke out and cases started to swell, public complacency and non-abidance to the preventive measures were being cited as the main factor for aggravation of the pandemic situation.

However, prominent political figures, bureaucrats, wealthy individuals and decorated people contracting the infectious disease or falling prey could be construed as evidences about scapegoating the commoners, apparently to cover up shortcomings among the policy makers.

From early part of 2020 till date, health experts have been cautioning that the preventive measures cannot be based solely on detection of cases through the viral tests and pointing out that the test results have many false negatives, especially in the rapid antigen tests, and instances of false positives, which they attribute to nucleic acid residues from dead viruses.

In-spite of sample testing universally accepted as the primary means to determine one's health status in the context of Covid-19, experts carrying out constant studies on the pandemic have been vouching for vigorous follow-up actions such as primary healthcare teams visiting homes to trace close contacts of infected people and for promoting citizen awareness to stimulate voluntary isolation and self-referral for testing.

Regardless of the experts' advisories, there seems to be no serious efforts on the part of the government to conduct contact tracing as could be comprehended from people going for the tests on their own volition after sensing deterioration in their health condition.

Hesitancy to get the health status confirmed may also be due to apprehension that public hospitals and Covid Care Centres may not entertain admission as these facilities are already running out of beds and facing shortage of medical oxygen.

Thus, the few options left for the government, as recommended by the experts, are to target and expedite vaccination of all the eligible citizens, train or engage more vaccinators, prevail upon the private sector to offer stronger support to the public sector, build vaccine confidence at the community level and trust in public health advisories, and involve state or local level organisations to check flouting of the safety protocols by all citizens.

Moreover, the government shall have to bring on board the salaried class as well as local volunteers to ensure provision of edibles at the doorstep of the impoverished section of the society, who are already hit hard by the containment measures, to keep them indoors.

The wealthier sections of the society, in particular, need to demonstrate benevolence to at-least help their poor local neighbours in this critical juncture.

As had been often commented through this column, the healthcare service providers should assert their rights over essential medicines, testing kits and life-support system to tackle the pandemic in the most efficient manner and prevent more deaths.

As further deepening of the health crisis will only multiply their workload, the frontline workers shouldn't fret from making public if they feel that government apathy, if any, has been impeding their efforts as it is now crystal clear that the pandemic will continue to wreak havoc in the absence of strong, sustained and collective strategic response.