Don’t clam up. Say what’s on your mind
For Geetanjali Kumar, a psychologist in Delhi, the process of getting to know her patients would start before their first consultation. “I often observed them in the waiting area — body language, expressions, gestures can say as much as words,” she says.
Which is why she was hesitant to counsel patients virtually, in the lockdown, and especially reluctant to take on new cases.
But as conditions intensified and patients needed her even more than usual, she decided it was worth a shot. Now, she admits, most patients have adapted well. “When they are using any means available to reach out, it means their need is great and so is their commitment,” she says. “Some clients are enjoying the increased informality and convenience of speaking from their homes.”
Of course, this does not take into account people whose home environments are not conducive — whether because they’re overcrowded or filled with stressors or are places of abuse. It doesn’t take into account those who need to discuss issues their families may not know of — alternate sexuality, personal matters or probfor
YOUR DAILY WORKOUT
Cow face pose: Sit on a mat with your thighs crossed such that one knee sits atop the other. Now lift right arm over right shoulder and twist left arm backwards such that both hands meet at the back. Keep your spine straight and breathe deeply for as many minutes as is comfortable.
A QUICK-FIX RECIPE
Mango Shrikhand Ingredients: 2 cups yoghurt (for hung curd); 1 cup mango pulp; ¼ tsp cardamom powder; 2 tbsp saffron milk (soak a few strands in 2 tbsp warm milk); 1 tbsp chopped pistachios and almonds; 2 tbsp powdered sugar (optional) to revive the economy,” Kejriwal said in a digital press briefing.
Kejriwal did not mention any measure on interstate travel, which the Centre has allowed in its fresh order. Also, barber shops, spas and salons, which too have been permitted, will not open in the national capital immediately. On Monday night, Delhi’s coronavirus dashboard stood at 10,054 cases — of which 5,409 are active — and 160 deaths. Thus far, 4,485 people have recovered from the disease in Delhi.
All relaxations announced by Kejriwal will be applicable across Delhi, except in containment zones which will allow the movement of essential personnel alone and have stricter perimeter control. At present, Delhi has 73 containment zones, which can broadly be defined as the epicentre of an infection.
Kejriwal said taxis and cab operators, such as Ola and Uber, are allowed to function with each vehicle carrying a maximum of two passengers and a driver. The same rule will be applicable for private cars. Pillion-riding will not be allowed in case of twowheelers, and carpooling/shared services will be prohibited.
Buses will be allowed with a maximum of 20 passengers in each vehicle, and all people boarding them will be screened. “Drivers will be instructed to sanitize the seats after each passenger deboards,” Kejriwal said.
“Grameen Sewa vehicles can operate with a maximum of two passengers, maxi cabs with a maximum of five passengers, and rural transport vehicles (smaller buses) with a maximum of 11 passengers,” he said.
While Sunday’s federal guidelines permitted interstate movement of passenger vehicles and buses with “mutual consent” of the states and the Union Territories (UTS) involved, confusion prevailed on Monday at Delhi’s borders with Gautam Budh Nagar (Noida) and Gurugram that have been sealed. Authorities in both satellite towns later clarified that stringent restrictions at their borders will continue, and people — except health care personnel — will need passes like before to cross over.
In addition to the announcement on public transport, another significant step announced by Kejriwal was the opening of marketplaces and all shops. In line with central guidelines, the chief minister allowed stores in marketplaces to function, but they will have to follow lems with the family itself.
Still, at a time when even the calmest among us are having trouble sleeping, and then struggling to find a reason to get out of bed, when anxiety is a daily feature, it helps to have an expert a phone call away.
It’s a phone call more people are finding themselves in need of. The Mumbai-based mental health facility Mpower - The Centre, which launched its helpline in partnership with the Maharashtra government and BMC on April 3, says it has received 42,000 calls so far.
“A few patients have said they feel the ambience of a clinic helps them open up more,” says Sapna Bangar, psychiatrist and head of Mpower. “And of course remote therapy is difficult for people with relationship issues. Privacy is a big issue.”
Technology can also pose a challenge. “It can be particularly hard to have sound and networks waver when you’re discussing something sensitive, or feel you are near breaking point,” says Delhi-based psychiatrist Sunil Mittal.
It is a good idea, adds Kumar,
Cat cow pose: Start on all-fours, hands in line with shoulders and knees in line with hips. Gently lift your tailbone, draw your shoulders back and lift your gaze. Now tuck in the tailbone, let your head drop, round the spine and draw the navel in to compress the abdomen.
Repeat as often as comfortable.
abMethod:
To prepare the hung muslin curd, place a cloth over a strainer deep and place that in a bowl. Put yoghurt in edges the cloth; gather and squeeze lightly up cloth to drain whey. at the top and Tie the allow curd to drain hrs in refrigerator. for 4-5 Make sure the bowl enough that collected is deep liquid doesn’t touch strainer. Once done, the empty your hung curd a bowl and mix in out in mango pulp, saffron cardamom powder, milk, dry fruit and sugar. smooth. Serve chilled, Whisk till ideally with hot puris. an odd-even rule.
Under the standard operating procedure prepared by Delhi, shops will open on alternate days on the basis of shop numbers. This will ensure that half the shops will open on one day, and the other half the next day and so on. However, no such rule will be applicable to shops selling essential items such as medicines, fruits and vegetables, groceries, dairy products, books and stationery. Also, standalone shops and shops in residential areas will be exempt.
Kejriwal approved the functioning of industries, albeit with staggered timings, and allowed all government and private offices to begin operations. His government did away with the curbs asking private offices to function with just 33% of their staff from office. But at the same time, he advised firms to encourage employees to work from home to the extent possible.
“Industrial firms whose name starts with M/S A to M/S L may function from 7.30 am to 5.30 pm, whereas firms whose registered name starts with M/S M to M/S Z may function from 8.30 am to 6.30 pm,” the Delhi government order issued late on Monday night said.
Kejriwal also allowed construction activities, but said workers must be from Delhi. Earlier, the government allowed resumption of work for projects in which labourers were available on site.
The chief minister announced that weddings (with a maximum of 50 people in attendance) and funerals (with a maximum of 20 people in attendance) will be allowed in the city, in another move that is in line with the Centre’s guidelines.
“Social distancing is a must. Complaints of violation can force us to take strict measures and scale up restrictions…wearing of masks is also mandatory for individuals when they are outdoors and in workplaces…all workplaces must have provision for sanitizer and hand wash,” he said.
Activities and services, which are banned across the country, will continue to be prohibited in Delhi. These include metro services, educational institutes, hotels and bars, shopping malls and theatres, social and political gatherings, and gyms and swimming pools, among others. The restriction on non-essential travel between 7pm and 7am will continue. “Prohibition on outdoor movement of people aged 65 and above, children aged 10 or less, pregnant women and people with health ailments...will continue,”
Seated hip twist: Sit with right foot crossed over left thigh and straighten your spine as you inhale. Gently twist to your left as you exhale. Repeat on the other side. Do 5 reps.
Kejriwal said.
Just as the central guidelines, the Delhi government’s order too asked employers to put in their “best efforts” to ensure that the contact-tracing Aarogya Setu app was “installed by employees having compatible mobile phones”. It asked district magistrates to “advise” individuals to install the application, which was previously mandatory for all government and private employees.
The order did not specifically mention e-commerce, but central guidelines say e-commerce players are allowed to deliver both essential and non-essential items across the country, barring containment zones.
“All other activities will be permitted (industrial/commercial) except those which are specifically prohibited... However, in containment zones, only essential activities shall be allowed,” the order said.
Jugal Kishore, head of community medicines department in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital, said the purpose of the lockdown was to flatten the curve. “To think that infections will stop with an indefinite lockdown is wrong. Phased relaxation of the lockdown is necessary now. What we need now is more cooperation from people...,” he said.
Union Health minister Harsh Vardhan. “It is difficult to predict numbers as they will depend on the adherence of restrictions on mobility and inter-mingling, personal hygiene, and prevention of exposure to infection by people in different areas. Additionally, it will also depend on the proportion of those infected among migrants and travellers from outside and within.” he added.
In the national capital, 299 new cases pushed Delhi’s tally above the 10,000 mark. As on Monday, Delhi has 10,054 cases and 160 deaths, putting the mortality rate close to 1.6%, which is roughly half of the national average of 3.09%.
Delhi has one of the highest testing rates in the country, with 6,919 tests per million population. The national testing rate for India is 1,540 tests per million population, according to Indian Council of Medical Research.
Based on data reported till Monday evening, India’s case fatality rate stood at 3.07%. Across the world, where 4.8 million infections have led to at least 317,000 deaths, the fatality rate is at 6.57%. In United States, the country now hardest hit, the
therapists to do test sessions, so they know if they need to work on their voice, tone or manner.
Longstanding patients, meanwhile, are waiting to get back to offline sessions.
“I miss the consultation room,” says a 22-year-old Delhi student who’s been seeing a counsellor for three years. “I felt secure there. At home, even in my room, I sometimes worry about my family overhearing the personal stuff.”
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I Lost My Body: This Oscar-winning animated French film from 2019 follows a severed hand as it runs around trying to find its body. The surreal tale deftly combines elements of horror with a (rather strange) love story and an underlying theme of existential longing. Most of all, it’s an exploration of how we navigate loss and tragedy. Available on Netflix. fatality stood at 6%. For China, where the virus first began spreading, the figure is 5.56%,
“The Covid-19 outbreak in India could have been far worse. If you look at the number of deaths we have averted, India has done remarkably well. This is mainly because of early measures like the nationwide lockdown,” said Dr Giridhar R Babu, professor and head of life course epidemiology, Public Health Foundation of India.
As India relaxes some more of the curbs that were put in place on March 25, experts said the coming weeks will be crucial to determine whether the country can hold onto these gains. “Lockdown helped reduce the rate of transmission, but what we do now will be of utmost importance. The focus should be on problem states like West Bengal, Gujarat, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, particularly Mumbai,” Babu added.
A weekly tracker of Covid-19 infection trends by disease modeling experts at Imperial College London indicated that the rate of transmission of the disease in India came down to below 1 (the authors identified it as 0.98), a threshold that is key to stop the virus from growing exponentially.
On May 11, the model predicted there would be 801 deaths in India for the week ending on Sunday. Reported deaths for the week, based on HT’S dashboard of cases, stood at 812.
In the week till Sunday, the speed at which the outbreak grew would take India 13.7 days to double its number of cases. But that could change for the worse as the country allows more offices to reopen and public transport to resume.
New infections among the hundreds of thousands of migrants returning to their villages and hometowns from urban centres is also feared to seed cases in rural parts of the country that had till now been largely free of infections.
A second expert said that India’s aggressive measures need to continue. “Careful risk assessments should identify hotspots and clusters, and continued efforts should be made to further strengthen capacities to respond, especially at sub-national levels. The core public health measures for Covid-19 response remain, rapidly detect, test, isolate, treat and trace all contacts,” said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director, World Health Organisation South East Asia Region, of which India is a part.
He is 40 and looks younger. But he’s already a grandfather.
“Yes, I got married very early... at 14,” confesses Muhammed Shekha Ul Hoque (aka MDS). He became a dad at the age of 18, in 1997, the year he arrived in the Delhi region from his village in West Bengal and made Gurugram his new home.
This afternoon, he’s talking on Whatsapp from his home in Palam Vihar. A freelance plumber, Mr Hoque is summoned to homes to mend the damaged water taps, to lay out marble on the floor and various other tasks needed in houses. The lockdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic put a stop to his work, though these days he is again starting to get assignments.
Mr Hoque is grateful that the pandemic began in earnest only after he reached an important milestone in his family. His second daughter was married in February.
“The lockdown started not long after I returned to Gurgaon with my wife and remaining daughters.”
Mr Hoque has four children, and all are girls. Shahnaz Parveen, the eldest, was married six years ago and has a son. Masoom Khatun was married this year. Mr Hoque says he comes from a social milieu where, traditionally, the education of children was not a primary priority. “My mother, Murzina Bibi, is illiterate.” But his only sister, Ishna Khatun, did manage to educate herself till 8th standard.
He himself is “dasvi fail”, meaning he managed to clear the 9th standard. His wife, Bahrun Bibi, studied till 3rd standard, and
“can read the notice boards and newspapers.” While he spent his years in Gurugram making a career and earning a living, Mr Hoque made sure to send the next generation of females in the family—his daughters who were growing up in the village—to school. But the progression of education spread slowly in the family. The eldest dropped out after completing the 8th standard, and the one who got married this year managed to reach up to 11th standard.
It was some years back that his eldest daughter decided to learn “tailory”, a vocation he heartily encouraged “because at least the city you never see routes by easing restrictions on utilization of airspace for civilian aircraft. The hospitality industry, which has also seen revenue slide to near zero, has also drawn a blank. The automobile industry wants the government to help shore up demand through steps such as an incentive-based vehicle scrappage scheme and reduction in tax rates. But their demands, too, have not been accepted. “The auto industry was keenly looking forward to some direct fiscal measures, which could have boosted demand and stopped job losses,” said Rajan Wadhera, president of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam). “The industry will continue to engage with government and seek direct interventions for revival.”
The drop in crude oil prices and the coronavirus-induced lockdown has delivered a double whammy to India’s energy companies, especially those in the private sector. “Firms are getting hammered heavily and private companies are at a greater disadvantage. Operations cannot survive this even in the near term, whereas it would take at least a couple of quarters for things to normalize. Until then, the government should consider a waiver on royalty and cess for Brent crude below $50 per barrel,” Ajay Dixit, chief executive of Cairn India had said in an interview early in May. The upstream sector had sought government support as it is key to energy security. To be sure, some experts say the use of liquidity as a tool, rather than extending direct relief to businesses, is the right approach. There was no other way it could have been done, according to former chief statistician of India Pronab Sen. “The sort of intervention that is needed is so large and wide that the government simply does not have the reach to be able to deliver. Nor does the government have the information or the relationships that are needed to make it effective. Financial institutions have both of these. Using them as the front end (to deliver stimulus) makes a lot of sense,” said Sen.
Sen said the measures announced so far seek to tackle humanitarian problems on the one hand and stalled production on the other. “The sensible thing to do is to keep production units alive. What has been done is essentially towards that objective,” said Sen.
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