Cases surge in 4 states after returning migrants test +ve

CHALLENGE As infections rise in Bihar, J’khand, Raj and Odisha, officials have decided to increase quarantine period

RANCHI/BHUBANESWAR/ PATNA: A spurt in Covid-19 cases in Bihar, Odisha, Rajasthan and Jharkhand since May 1, has been linked to migrant workers who have returned from various cities across the country, state officials said, confirming the fear that rural India is no longer safe from the coronavirus pandemic that has affected 62,750 people nationally so far. This realisation has also caused panic among health experts, as till now nearly 80% of the cases recorded have been seen in urban areas, where the infrastructure needed to treat a victim of a pandemic, is better.

Ever since a nationwide lockdown was announced starting March 25, migrant workers from across the country began to walk and cycle back to their home states even as a few states like Delhi deployed buses to ferry some of them home. Last week, the Indian Railway began running special trains for migrants separated from their families on account of the lockdown and stranded without any earnings. However, as they have begun to reach their home states and are being placed in quarantine centres, governments are grappling with the ramifications of the pandemic reaching rural areas.

According to the union health ministry, across India there is a shortfall of primary healthcare centres and community healthcare centres by 22% and 30% respectively. The largest shortfall is in states like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh —incidentally, most of the migrant workers who travel the length and breadth of the country for work in factories and other industries, like construction, hail from these six states.

“Although Asha workers in rural areas monitor health, there is no quality infrastructure to deal with a pandemic like coronavirus. Around half of the posts in rural India are vacant,” said Amulya Nidhi, member of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, a network of non-governmental organisations working in the public health area.

NEW CASES LINKED TO MIGRANTS

Bihar, where 70% of the new cases since May 1 have been detected in migrant workers, has not as yet revealed where they have returned from.

So far, Surat, a textile hub in Gujarat which has the second highest number of Covid cases in the state after Ahmedabad, has emerged as one of the biggest centres of Covid-19. In Jharkhand, one-third of the 154 positive cases spread over 13 districts have been reported in the past week, around the time that migrant workers began to reach the state. According to the state health department’s bulletin issued on Saturday morning, 20 confirmed cases were found in Garhwa district and two cases were detected in Koderma district. “All the 20 migrant labourers had arrived in Garhwa on May 5. They were part of 51 passengers who came here by a bus from Surat. All of them are in quarantine,” said district’s said sub-divisional officer Kamleshwar Narayan. The quarantine centre is an under-construction jail. At present, it houses 158 migrants, a majority of whom have returned from Surat, Narayan

said. “Results of samples collected on May 6-7 have not yet come,” he said. Koderma was reverted to an orange zone as two workers who arrived from Surat and Varanasi, tested positive.

All the 100 fresh Covid-19 cases reported in the last 24 hours in coastal Ganjam district of Odisha are returnees from Surat, said Ganjam district collector Vijay Aamrita Kulange. In other hotspots such as Jajpur, Bhubaneswar, Balasore, Bhadrak and Rourkela, most of those who have tested positive in the past fortnight are migrant workers who have returned from Surat.

In Bihar, 100 workers tested positive on Saturday taking the total number of cases to 589. “Going by our experience over the past 10 days, almost 60% to 70% of the tested samples which came positive were of people who came from outside the state,” said Bihar’s principal secretary (health) Sanjay Kumar. That’s 224 new cases already. Health secretary Lokesh K Singh said that migrants housed in quarantine centres at Khagaria, Samastipur, Muzaffarpur and Begusarai have tested positive till now.

As cases rise, states have decided to expand the period of quarantine to 28 days.

NUMBERS TO SWELL

On Saturday, five special trains carrying migrants from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu set out for Odisha. So far about 46,000 migrants have returned to Odisha and 500,000 more are expected to arrive in the following week.

Since May 2, 78,706 migrant workers have reached Bihar . Twelve trains carrying 14,245 migrants reached Bihar on Saturday; 14 more, carrying 17,054 workers, are lined up for Sunday, Anupam Kumar, secretary, information and public relations department said. Officials in Rajasthan also said most of the new cases were reported from the border districts of Gujarat, from where the migrant workers have returned.