New Delhi: It has been almost three months since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown on 24 March, to flatten the Covid-19 curve and allow authorities and healthcare workers time to organise testing equipment and treatment protocol.
Even as India’s Covid numbers show no signs of slowing down, lockdown restrictions across much of the country have been lifted, adding more pressure to the country’s healthcare infrastructure.
For several weeks, ThePrint’s reporters and photojournalists have been travelling across India to bring you eyewitness accounts of what’s actually happening in different parts of India and how the pandemic is impacting the lives of India’s people, both medically and financially.
This week, they were in Ahmedabad, Guwahati and Vijayawada, visiting mobile testing facilities, virus hotspots, hospitals and more.
High fatality rate and too little testing in Gujarat
At 6.2 per cent, Gujarat has the highest case fatality rate in the country, which is double the national average of 2.8 per cent. More than 80 per cent of these deaths have taken place in Ahmedabad, which has a case fatality rate of 7.1 per cent. Its positivity rate of 8 per cent also indicates that only those with severe symptoms are being tested.
The Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, which has the highest number of patients, has come under fire repeatedly, for purchasing uncertified ventilators, mismanagement of beds and more. Additionally, delays in testing and the inclusion of private healthcare providers in the fight against the pandemic, have also been criticised.
ThePrint’s Swagata Yadavar spoke to the hospital’s officer on special duty, Dr M.M. Prabhakaran, who deflected the problem to the nature of the cases. “We are seeing the most severe cases who do not get admission anywhere else, so our numbers and deaths are higher.” Read more about ThePrint’s travels across Ahmedabad here.
‘Ruthless quarantine’ policy in Assam
Over in Guwahati, ThePrint’s Angana Chakrabarti spoke to disease surveillance workers and other healthcare authorities to make sense of how they were dealing with the spike in cases in Assam after inter-state travel was restarted.
Until 4 May, the state had recorded only 42 Covid-19 cases, but ever since people started arriving from other states, the numbers have now surged to more than 4,300, severely burdening Assam’s public health facilities. The only way to contain the number of cases is by adopting what the state’s Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma called a “ruthless quarantine” policy.
Strict screening and testing of people entering the state, as well as a two-week quarantine period even for those who test negative are part of Assam’s strategy to tackle the virus, but the government is also planning a reimposition of the lockdown. Read more here.
Mobile testing centres in Andhra Pradesh
Testing is where the Andhra Pradesh government scores in comparison to rest of the country, conducting 11,207 tests per million. The state has also stepped up its commitment to providing mobile testing facilities, with fleets of buses being transformed into testing centres. ThePrint’s Aneesha Bedi and Suraj Singh Bisht visited mobile testing centres in Vijayawada, which was the first city to set these up, in May.
These free testing facilities have chairs for lab technicians and doctors and other workers, acrylic-covered windows with a hole for the technicians to collect samples in a contact-less manner, and even isolation wards. Results are available in 48 hours. Read more here.
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