Both financial districts of their respective countries, New York makes for a better comparison than New Delhi to gauge Mumbai’s Covid plight
783 8.5 437 18
Sq km
million
Sq km
million
(1,026,724*) (188,700*)
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started making noises about being ignored. Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said, “We are supporting the government in Maharashtra but we are not the key decision-maker.” Opposition leader Fadnavis was quick to cash in on the seeming lack of cohesion in the alliance by launching a statewide Maharashtra Bachao (Save Maharashtra) campaign, alleging that Thackeray was not in command of the situation.
Indeed, Thackeray seemed to be floundering in the first month and a half of the crisis. Rather than tap the wealth of experience in his cabinet—he had not called a cabinet meeting till June 2—the chief minister seemed to be relying more on a clutch of senior bureaucrats, spearheaded by chief secretary Ajoy Mehta, for advice. Defending his style of administration in a recent media interaction, he asked, “What’s the harm in that? Have I taken any wrong decision? I am not a Bollywood hero who needs to be seen everywhere. I like to work in silence.” To which Fadnavis countered with a swift riposte: “Political leadership must give direction to the bureaucracy’s wisdom. Uddhavji has failed on that front.”
To be fair to Thackeray, even Prime Minister Narendra Modi formed 11 empowered
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groups of senior bureaucrats and experts to work as his front-line team to meet the Covid challenge. But it was the battle among the bureaucrats Thackeray trusted that pushed Mumbai to the brink of a Covid disaster. The then BMC commissioner Praveen Pardeshi, a competent but headstrong officer, was at loggerheads with chief secretary Mehta on how the city should combat the pandemic. The result was that infection rates in Mumbai grew from 7 to 18 per cent in April even as deaths climbed to 1,068 on May 15 from 16 on April 1.
While COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially not only in Mumbai but across the state, Thackeray seemed mostly worried about getting elected to the legislative council to retain his chief ministership. The Constitution mandates that a minister become a legislator within six months of taking oath if he wants to continue in office. Thackeray had to do so by May 27. Nine council seats were vacant, but the Election Commission of India (ECI) was in no mood to conduct elections for them in the middle of the pandemic. Maharashtra governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari turned down the Maharashtra cabinet’s recommendation to nominate Thackeray to one of the two vacant seats in the council. A desperate Thackeray called the PM on April 29 to look into the matter. The next day, Koshyari wrote to the ECI requesting them to conduct polls for the nine seats. Eventually, Thackeray was elected unopposed on May 21. No one knows what transpired between Modi and Thackeray but the chief minister has been a livewire of action ever since.
To be sure, no one expected any miracles from Thackeray or the state administration considering that Maharashtra, especially its capital, Mumbai, was a
ticking time bomb of COVID-19. The more than 300 slums in Maximum City house eight million, or 45 per cent of the city’s population. Dharavi, its biggest slum, has 750,000 people in an area of 2.1 square kilometres. With several people crammed into tiny houses (some as tiny as 8 ft x 10 ft), ‘social distancing’ is near-impossible. “It is unfair to compare Mumbai with Delhi when it comes to handling the pandemic, because Mumbai has just a 10th of Delhi’s area,” says economist Ajit Ranade, a member of the Maharashtra government’s task force on reviving the state economy. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region has over 30 million people living in 6,355 sq. km, compared to the National Capital Region, where 46 million people live within 54,984 sq. km. “In that sense, Mumbai is more comparable to New York,” says Ranade. (See Viral Cities.) Even in a country like the US that has advanced healthcare, the number of cases and deaths has been high, he said, highlighting the challenges before the state government.
Political commentator Sudheendra Kulkarni also maintains that Thackeray cannot be held responsible for the stressed public health infrastructure as he has been in office only for six months. According to him, the threeparty coalition government had to face its greatest test almost at birth. “If we look at the political uncertainty he faced and the stress on health which is the work of previous governments, I’d give Thackeray high marks,” he says.
Afew external factors were arguably beyond the government’s control and played a major role in the spread of the virus in Maharashtra. Like the influx of 150,000 international travellers between February 22 and March 23 at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. Thackeray blames the Union government for not doing proper checks on international travellers and for the summary lockdown without giving time for the state to prepare. “The testing method at the international airport was faulty,” he says. “Everyone takes paracetamol when they have fever. Merely screening for fever at the airport was not enough.” Ranade agrees: “We should have focused on airports right at the start.”
However, several of the state government’s decisions were also poorly implemented. Deputy CM Pawar had announced on March 21 that the poor would be given three months’ ration through the public distribution system. The decision, however, was implemented only on April 24. The government also failed to provide essential supplies in Mumbai’s containment zones. In Bandra (East), residents staying a stone’s throw from Matoshree say they have not got fresh vegetables for two months. “We purchase milk online but fresh vegetables are a distant dream,” says Prakash More, 46, a resident. The government mandated centralised vegetable stalls instead of dispersing them. Such decisions led to crowding in public places, defeating the very purpose of the lockdown.
With his chief ministership secured and to counter the mounting criticism of his government’s handling of the pandemic in Mumbai, Thackeray began to move swiftly to stem the rot. On May 8, he replaced BMC commissioner Pardeshi, an IAS officer of the
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Chief Secretary
The 1984-batch IAS official has a tight grip on the CM’s office. Mehta retired in Sept. 2019, but was given an extension till Jun. 2020. He has been behind key Covid decisions: imposing the lockdown, upgrading health facilities, forming a state-level taskforce of doctors, transferring BMC commissioner Praveen Pardeshi, deferring govt employees’ salaries and home delivery of liquor
Minister of Health, Maharashtra
The NCP leader ensured supply of PPE through CSR funds in the initial days of Covid. Under him, the state significantly scaled up the number of Covid testing laboratories and ICU beds in government hospitals. A mechanical engineer by training, Tope visits his ailing mother at Bombay Hospital before starting his day
Transport Minister
Uddhav Thackeray’s ‘Man Friday’ arranged transport for around 500,000 migrant labourers to railway stations from where special Shramik trains were being run. He also arranged for buses to bring back 3,000 Maharashtra students stranded in Kota, Rajasthan
PWD Minister
The Shiv Sena leader from Thane played a major role in ramping up the number of hospital beds in the state’s third worstaffected city. He roped in private hospitals, making beds there available for COVID-19 patients. Shinde also helped set up a 150-bed prefabricated portable clinic in Thane
Head, Task Force of Medical Experts
Dr Oak prepared a standard operating procedure (SOP) for the treatment of Covid patients. His thrust on using the pulse oximeter, which measures oxygen levels, to identify high-risk patients has paid dividends
Pune Municipal Commissioner
The 2002-batch IAS official effectively enforced the lockdown, containing the spread of COVID-19 to only 8 per cent geographical area of the city. His focus on creating microcontainment areas made contracttracing more effective
CEO, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Jan Arogya Yojana
Dr Shinde prepared the plan to bring every citizen of Maharashtra under the health insurance scheme’s ambit. The 2007-batch IRS official also helped draw a plan to tap beds in private hospitals for Covid patients
ratories were set up in 15 of the state’s 36 districts. In his Facebook address on May 31, Thackeray said the number will touch 100 by June-end. Encouragingly, the 72,300 cases on June 2 are half of what a central team visiting Mumbai and Pune at April-end had predicted. It had said the state would see 150,000 cases by May-end, going by the doubling rate of seven days for the disease at that time. “The numbers are less than predicted. That means the machinery is working,” says chief secretary Mehta.
Yet the battle is only half won and much more needs to be done in the health sector. On June 1, to the embarrassment of the government, an unidentified man in his 50s lay unattended for five days on the footpath outside the BMC-run King Edward Memorial (KEM) hospital in Parel, an IV syringe in his left hand. The same day, Asma Mehendi, a pregnant 26-year-old resident of Mumbra on the outskirts of Mumbai, died in an autorickshaw after trying and failing to find an ambulance to take her to hospital. While investigating these cases, BMC’s Chahal assured: “The hospitals have told us they will take in all patients. If there are no beds available, patients will be placed in buffer zones, but no one will be turned away.” Chahal says he is not worried about the rising numbers as long as the administration is able to manage things. “Numbers should not scare us,” he maintains. “People should not die uncared [for] on the roads.”
Apart from Mumbai, cities like Pune and Malegaon are emerging as major areas of concern for the state administration. Pune has emerged as the state’s second largest hotspot—the number of Covid patients in the city has touched 7,000. But here, too, the recovery rate has gone up to 54.8 per cent while the mortality rate has come down from 10.03 per cent on April 15 to 4.8 per cent now. “There is no shortage of beds or ambulances. From the first day, we started reaching MoUs with private hospitals and are now freeing up ICU beds by moving patients with mild symptoms to other healthcare centres,” says Shekhar Gaikwad, commis
sioner of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). But it remains a long haul, with the administration’s claims often not matching up to reality.
In the densely populated town of Malegaon in north Maharashtra, infections are rising rapidly. “Malegaon has a population density of 19,000 people per sq. km, four times that of an average Indian city,” says Suraj Mandhare, collector and district magistrate of Nashik district. The sea of migrants walking along the Mumbai-Nashik highway to return to their hometowns also possibly contributed to the increase in the number of infections. Deputy Collector Nitin Mundaware, who is in charge of migrant rehabilitation, says shelters were set up in the district and the onward travel of migrant workers was facilitated by buses and trains. “We set up 29 shelters and helped 70,000 stranded migrant workers travel by buses and trains,” he says.
However, former CM Fadnavis continues to allege that there is no overall coordination among various government departments and that the state government has not made good use of the aid package of Rs 28,000 crore provided by the Centre. Transport minister Anil Parab, though, dubs this figure as “imaginary” and says the Union government helped with only Rs 6,649 crore and it has been utilised. What is cause for worry for the Shiv Sena, particularly in Mumbai, is the low morale of its cadre, especially after the death of their zonal head in Vile Parle—Shashikant Patkar. He apparently collapsed in hospital and died even before he was tested. Thackeray will need to focus on reinvigorating his party to do much more on the ground.
The economic setback Maharashtra and Mumbai have suffered due to the COVID-19 lockdown is enormous. The commercial centres within Mumbai, including Nariman Point, Central Mumbai (Worli, Parel, Lower Parel, Prabhadevi and Dadar), Vikhroli, the Bandra-Kurla Complex, Andheri, Goregaon and part of Navi Mumbai, saw near-zero activity. Mumbai houses some of the country’s largest corporate groups, including Tata, Aditya Birla, Mahindra, Godrej, RPG Enterprises, Hinduja and JSW, all of whom stopped production of non-essential goods, and created work from home options for those in administrative and IT functions. “The top lines of companies have become zero,” says Seshagiri Rao, joint MD of JSW Steel, which has four manufacturing plants in Maharashtra—at Dolvi, Tarapur, Vasind
and Kalmeshwar. The only silver lining, as D.K. Joshi, chief economist with Crisil, points out is that the “rural areas of Maharashtra have been less impacted by the pandemic. So even if big centres are affected, technically, the units in rural areas can open”. However, since manufacturing has complex linkages with other units, some of which operate from the red zones, industry was in nearparalysis for two months.
Thackeray has deployed two task forces in the economic sector—one under deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar for the gradual lifting of the lockdown; the other, led by scientist Raghunath Mashelkar, banker Deepak Parekh and economists Vijay Kelkar and Ranade, to work on ways to curb its impact on the economy. Ranade advocates a decentralised and flexible approach to revive the state economy. At large manufacturing locations, it should be left to the corporates to ensure social distancing, sanitisation, temperature checking, providing gloves and masks, or giving accommodation to workers. “The plan should be to slowly ramp up production in the manufacturing sector,” he says. Services have to selectively open. The malls, cinemas, sports extravaganzas (like the Indian Premier League) will remain under lockdown. Hotels can start with 20 per cent staff. The gradual opening is needed, else the economic crisis will supersede the healthcare crisis,” he maintains.
To revive industrial units, experts say the state and the Centre should start paying all pending bills. Governmentowned firms owe Rs 5 lakh crore to the MSME sector. There is a case for supporting businesses with cash, since those who have suffered losses will not be in a position to take fresh loans. Income tax refunds need to be given early instead of waiting till September to issue refund certificates. Ditto with GST refunds. “Parts of the economy will revive if infrastructure starts quickly. Moreover, spending is likely to be higher
Updated every half an hour, it shows the number of vacant beds in 6,000 govt and 2,624 pvt hospitals across the state
A daily dialysis facility for 600 Covid and 100 suspected Covid patients is likely to reduce the death rate. A dedicated portal has been set up for registration
The BMC has tied up with Uber for booking of 456 ambulances. Their drivers are equipped with mobile phones and PPE kits
In slums and containment areas, 15 people associated with each Covid patient are sent for institutional quarantine
Community leaders are monitoring food quality and toilet sanitisation in containment areas. Each of the 227 BMC wards will have a war room of 78 people
The BMC has raised salaries of interning doctors from Rs 11,000 to Rs 50,000 a month and of resident doctors from Rs 51,000 to Rs 61,000. Specialists will get Rs 2 lakh a month
A junior IAS official has been posted in each of the seven govt hospitals. S/he assigns a unique code to each bed and monitors discharge policy
Each hospital has staff to ensure a Covid patient’s body is packed within half hour of death when the economy reopens due to pentup demand,” says Ranade.
Joshi feels Maharashtra should manage economic activity along with the virus. This can be done through better social distancing protocols and awareness. It will mean higher costs of production, but will still be better than keeping economic activity completely shut down, “because then it won’t recover”. Former CM Prithviraj Chavan says the state and central government should present the budget again with revised outlays. “The state government needs to prioritise its expenses. Even if the industry is operational, there will be no demand for luxury items,” he says. He feels the government needs to pay people cash to bolster their spending capacity. “It should also offer sops like concession in taxes and waiving land rent to the industry.”
Thackeray is aware that economic recovery is as important as flattening the curve of infections in the state. Borrowing a line from freedom-fighter Lokmanya Tilak, he announced ‘Mission Begin Again’ on May 31. In the first phase, from June 3, outdoor physical activities like cycling, jogging, running in open public spaces have been allowed between 5 am to 7 pm. In phase two, from June 5, all markets, except malls and market complexes, were allowed to open between 9 am and 5 pm. In the third phase, from June 8, all private offices can be opened with 10 per cent strength. However, schools, colleges, educational training and coaching institutes, metro, rail, cinema halls, theatres, gyms, swimming pools and auditoriums will stay shut. While these are good measures, in the months ahead, Thackeray will have to work even harder and seek the help of his cabinet colleagues and the Centre apart from the cooperation of the people. As even Kulkarni, otherwise a staunch critic of the Shiv Sena’s policies, says, “Thackeray has become inclusive and dynamic after forming the government. He is earnest and communicative.” In that perhaps lies the hope of the state getting back on its feet again.
Unlock 1.0 could be grim for Tamil Nadu, a state that witnessed a near ten-fold jump in Covid cases last month—from 2,323 in April to 22,333 on May 31. With 145 deaths reported through May, even the mortality rate surged to five times that of the earlier period. The only consolation perhaps is that at 0.7 per cent, Tamil Nadu’s mortality rate is well below the national average of 2.8 per cent and of other large states such as Maharashtra and Gujarat.
The worry now is the continuing spread of Covid in northern Chennai and its contiguous districts, which are densely populated and house much of the state’s industries. More than half the ‘active’ Covid cases are in Chennai, which also accounts for maximum deaths, and the Greater Chennai Corporation zones of Royapuram, Kodambakkam and Thiru. Vi Ka Nagar and Teynampet are among the hotspots within Chennai. With a sharp rise in cases over the past few days, the doubling rate is now less than a week. The national average is about 14 days.
The state government has been proactive against Covid. On March 15, Chief Minister E.K. Palaniswami appointed a Covid task force headed by chief secretary K. Shanmugam. On May 1, J. Radhakrishnan, a senior IAS officer and principal secretary (revenue administration, disaster management and mitigation), was made the special nodal officer for the Greater Chennai Corporation and tasked with checking the outbreak in Chennai, particularly its northern parts. Armed with a micro plan, a 500-member team, including 120 sanitary inspectors, began door to door screening and testing. Those testing positive were quarantined or put under hospital care. To build immunity, each household was provided a medical kit, including herbal drink powder, zinc tablets and multi-vitamins, along with masks and sanitisers.
It is the densely populated areas that have reported the most cases in Chennai. Experts are now calling for focused testing of symptomatic people and the vulnerable segments, such as senior citizens. By May 31, 2,052 senior citizens and 1,286 children under the age of 12 were afflicted by Covid. A committee constituted to set guidelines for the management of senior citizens and individuals with co-morbid conditions has made several recommendations—disease registry, intensive treatment, monitoring and followup on Covid patients through virtual groups, specific diets for patients and integration of Indian medicine into the treatment plan.
Palaniswami is banking heavily on aggressive testing and intensive care to keep the death rate low. Legislative assembly elections are less than a year away and the ruling AIADMK will be judged by the government’s performance during the pandemic. Convinced that stringent enforcement of the lockdown was the most effective weapon, Palaniswami had, on April 24, come up with a ‘double lockdown’ plan—a lockdown within the lockdown, with no one to be seen outside their homes—till May 3 for Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Salem and Tiruppur. Only when officials pointed out that April 30 was pay day and the next three days were government holidays did he curtail it to four days (April 26-29).
So far, the administration has
To augment the medical workforce, the government recruited 530 doctors, 1,000 nurses and 1,508 lab technicians over the past few months. Additionally, the state Medical Services Corporation selected 1,323 nurses, who were given postings immediately. Another 2,570 nurses were appointed for six months, beginning May 8, while the services of doctors, nurses and lab technicians due to retire this March and April were extended by two months. Palaniswami also announced that front line medical staff afflicted by COVID-19 will be entitled to a cash grant of Rs 2 lakh and free treatment. In case of death, their families will be paid
Rs 50 lakh and one member will get a government job.
Officials attribute the surge in Covid cases to intensive testing. About 500,000 tests have been conducted so far. While the first batch of 100,000 RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction) test kits arrived from South Korea on May 17, another 900,000 kits are coming in at the rate of 100,000 a week. “The state’s low death rate is because of early diagnosis and treatment. Aggressive testing with maximum number of samples has been the highlight of our strategy,” says health minister Dr C. Vijaya Baskar. “The mortality rate will
increase when more people over the age of 60 are affected. That’s why it is important to protect the older people.” Public health experts fear that whenever schools reopen, children could become the biggest carriers of the virus to their grandparents. The death audit committee set up in April has observed the death rate to be higher in the 50-plus age group whereas there have been no deaths among children below the age of 12.
With Covid cases concentrated in specific areas, the number of containment zones has dropped sharply to less than half—from 635 on May 22 to 254 on May 29 in Chennai and 1,143 to 568 the same week across the state. As of May 29, the containment zones were restricted to 21 of the state’s 37 districts. A week ago, these were spread across 30 districts. “Containment serves no purpose anymore as the magnitude of the spread is so large. Moreover, there is no denial of community transmission happening in Chennai. Preventing deaths is the biggest challenge now,” says Dr Jayaprakash Muliyil, chairman, Scientific Advisory Committee, National Institute of Epidemiology, Chennai.
With the easing of the lockdown, the state is resuming regular hospital services, including elective surgeries. The government is encouraging private hospitals and the Indian Medical Association’s fever clinics to step up services. While many areas may no longer be classified as containment clusters, Covid continues to remain a challenge in the near future. As veteran virologist Dr T. Jacob John says: “As long as there are people, the virus will find them.”
Palaniswami’s other big test will be to revive the economy ahead of the polls next year. His government has set up a committee, chaired by former RBI governor C. Rangarajan, to formulate short- and mediumterm economic strategies. A report is expected in August.
mostly through clusters. Among them, clusters that mix the elderly and other vulnerable sections with the healthy are more dangerous,” says Dr Giridhar R. Babu, head of life course epidemiology, Public Health Foundation of India.
Others caution against the government’s move to home-quarantine the not so serious Covid patients. “The government must consider various factors, such as the patient’s age, living space, number of family members, and the health status of the individual and the entire family. Those who tick all the boxes can be kept in home isolation with daily virtual monitoring,” says Dr Atul Kakar, senior consultant (medicine) at Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.
How the Kejriwal government manages the city’s containment zones, where an estimated 500,000 people live, will be a key determinant in the control of Covid. The government’s strategy is to unlock these areas if they do not report any new cases. While several clusters have been opened up, some like Jahagirpuri, Jhilmil Colony and Nizamuddin Basti have remained closed since March. Nizamuddin is where a big congregation by the Tablighi
Jamaat in March became one of the early sources of transmission of Covid in the country.
Protecting the capital’s front line healthcare workers remains a daunting task. One in every 30 Covid patients in Delhi is a healthcare worker. “Healthcare workers face repeated exposure to asymptomatic patients. Shortage of PPE and lack of public awareness lead to infections,” says Dr Harjit Bhatti, president, Progressive Medicos and Scientists Forum, an organisation of medical professionals of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi.
With the number of cases rising, the Delhi government, on June 1, directed all 11 district magistrates to increase bed capacity by identifying banquet halls and indoor stadiums. They were also asked to identify additional cremation/ burial grounds on “top priority”. Kejriwal has said that experts told him that the Covid curve in Delhi will start flattening in Julyend or early August. Health minister Satyendar Jain says the government is preparing at least a month in advance as the Covid problem may not end anytime soon.
There is also a revenue crunch to deal with. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said Delhi has sought immediate assistance of Rs 5,000 crore from the Centre. “We need around Rs 3,500 crore every month just to pay salaries and bear office expenses,” said Sisodia, who has written to Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman for assistance.
f the 4,631 active COVID-19 cases in Gujarat listed on the state government’s tracking website, 3,518, or over 68 per cent, are in Ahmedabad. At the time of writing, 888 people in the city had died, just over 81 per cent of the state’s death toll, and 98,754 Ahmedabad residents were under quarantine, about 42 per cent of the 235,017 people quarantined across Gujarat. Things are so bad in Ahmedabad that the Gujarat High Court, on May 23, described conditions in the city’s Civil Hospital, a 110-acre facility that houses the Gujarat Medical Council, as “pathetic” and “worse than a dungeon”.
Stung, Gujarat’s health minister Nitin Patel said he had worked unstintingly “though my age is 64 and being a senior citizen, I am advised not to venture out of home”. He also said the morale of corona warriors should not be affected by overly harsh criticism. A week or so later, another Gujarat HC bench echoed the health minister’s concerns, noting that in “times of crisis, we need to bind, not bicker. The COVID-19 crisis is a humanitarian crisis, not a political crisis. Hence, it is imperative that no one politicise this issue”. Had it not been for the government, the court now suggested, “by now, we all would have been dead”. It also warned commentators, on social media particularly, to not take the court’s many orders criticising the state government for its COVID-19 response out of context.
If the state’s BJP government is keen for its critics to not cast aspersions or place blame, its own functionaries place the blame for
Ahmedabad’s situation squarely on the city’s Muslim population living in the walled city, more specifically those Muslims returning from the now notorious Tablighi Jamaat conference in New Delhi in March. Other states may have coped with returning conference-goers—with the Uttar Pradesh government, for instance, telling the state’s high court that it was no longer holding any Jamaat returnees in quarantine centres—but Ahmedabad authorities claim its minorities have been uniquely recalcitrant.
A Gujarat government official, requesting anonymity, said, “We had a good strategy in place to tackle minority community members in Surat and Vadodara, but we paid a heavy price in Ahmedabad as the minority community did not comply and tried to hide incidences of coronavirus infections and resisted the government’s attempts to screen residents.”
Though accurate numbers are hard to come by, most reported estimates claim Muslims, who make up less than 15 per cent of Ahmedabad’s population, account for over 60 per cent of the city’s Covid infections.
To contain the spread, government agencies reached out to Muslims with the help of politicians and local leaders of the community. For instance, Congress MLAs Imran Khedawala and Gyasuddin Shaikh worked with the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and health officials to convince Muslims to get tested and adhere to the Covid containment protocols. “All of us rose to the occasion to fight what is a battle to save humanity,” says Khedawala.
The authorities, though, had to grapple with tensions arising out of trust deficit, such as an incident of stone-pelting last month involving Muslims residing in the containment areas and the police. The near-riot situation was broken up only after the police resorted to firing tear gas and lathi-charge.
A government-affiliated medical expert, who again requested anonymity, said, “An iron hand was required to deal with Jamaatis and the Muslim population in the walled city.” The expert would not be drawn on the responsibility of, for instance, the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad, in which 415 of the 789 deaths were recorded by May 31; according to the Gujarat government, nearly 83 per cent of the victims at the hospital had “severe comorbidities”.
In the fifth phase of the lockdown that began on June 1, Ahmedabad has decided to concentrate its efforts on people in the 46 so-called micro-containment zones. But its public relations will surely have to improve. Salim Mohammed, a 32-year-old resident of the walled city, recalls how his father and brother helped distribute rations in the first week of April, when the entire country was in lockdown. They feared they had been exposed to the virus, but could not persuade the local government hospital to test them, because they were yet to show symptoms. Four days later, Salim’s 59-year-old grandfather developed symptoms and tested positive; he died in nine days. Salim’s father also tested positive, as he had long suspected. “We live in cramped quarters; for years, Muslim areas have been underdeveloped. They are hotbeds of contamination,” he says. It didn’t help, Salim adds, “that Muslims were treated as suspects, were being segregated into different wards, as though we had brought the infection to the city.”
Gujarat needs to re-focus on improving its number of daily tests to avoid undetected or missing cases, something that has already cost it dearly. On May 15, the rate of positive cases among those tested was 8.8 per cent, as against 2.6 per cent a month ago. This means that within a month, about nine out of 100 people were testing positive as opposed to two, indicating that cases had been missed in April, when testing numbers had been low. Perhaps if the state had reached out extensively and tested consistently, the virus would have been contained more effectively.