Panic, fear grip Ganjam as cases see steady rise
When Sadashiva Dakua, 36, from Odisha’s Ganjam district, lost his job in Gujarat’s Surat, it was not just the loss of income that he had to deal with. He also had to share a 100 square feet room with five other people left jobless because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown imposed to check its spread. Dakua had no option but to return home. “...what should I have done instead of fleeing?... In normal times, only half of us would be at the room at any given point in time as our working hours varied.”
Dakua said it was just too difficult and scary to live in the cramped room without money. “Several migrant workers in Surat were testing positive and I was scared...” said Dakua, who has been under quarantine along with 70 since returning to Ganjam 10 days back.
People like Dakua are now being blamed by locals for bringing the infection to Ganjam. “Why did they have to come at all? They would now ruin us,” said Meghnad Pradhan, a resident of Ganjam’s Polasara block.
Ganjam’s chief district medical officer, Umashankar Mishra, said the administration had till May 2, when the first case was detected in Ganjam, managed to keep things under control. “But as more and more migrant workers arrived from Surat on trains and buses, the positive cases increased fast,” he said.
Ganjam has since emerged as a Covid-19 hotspot with 307 cases. It accounts for over one-third of Odisha’s 876 cases with the influx of migrants pushing the tally. As many as 750 migrant workers have tested positive for the disease in the state.
As many as 55,000 migrant workers have returned to Ganjam alone from states like Gujarat, which is among the states worst-hit by the pandemic, officials said.
Their return has reflected in the spike in the Covid-19 cases over the last fortnight. An 18-year-old, who returned to the district on a bus, was the first to test positive in Ganjam on May 2.
The district has since reported 9-20 cases daily on an average.
Ganjam district collector Vijay Amrita Kulange said there is little to be worried about as the cases have been reported from quarantine centres alone.
But experts say the situation could worsen as samples of only 5,000-odd out of the 55,000 returning migrant workers have been tested so far. Until Sunday evening, 1,800-odd samples were pending with Covid-19 labs.
At several quarantine centres, only a handful, who showed symptoms, have been tested leaving the others worried that they may have contracted the disease too. At a quarantine centre in Mathura village, none of the 37 workers, who have arrived from Surat, have been tested so far, officials aware of the matter said.
Mishra said the administration was ramping up the testing facilities.
“We are testing 500 samples and would soon test 1,000 daily. We can test almost everyone,” he said even as another 50,000 more migrants were expected at quarantine centres.
Many workers have complained about the arrangements at the quarantine centres. At the Dhunkapada quarantine centre, workers said four buckets had been provided for 10 people each and just a bottle of hand wash for the total 73 there. “The toilets are stinking. With the gates shut, it feels as if we are serving jail sentences,” said Nakula Patra, a worker.
“We have not been tested for so far... officials throw medicines from a distance,” said another worker, who did not want to be named. The local villagers have also been guarding a pond, fearing some of the workers may scale the wall of the quarantine centre and bathe there.
Residents said there is hardly any focus on social distancing and added that the family of the first person to die of Covid-19 in the district gathered at Madhupali village for his post-death rituals without wearing masks.
“The real test would be ensuring social distancing. In Odisha villages, people believe in social mixing and not distancing. Once a Covid positive case in a quarantine centre infects someone outside, the community transmission would be a matter of time,” said Dr Binod Patra, who heads the community medicine department at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Bhubaneswar. “People are now not much worried as Odisha has not seen a higher death toll like Gujarat and Maharashtra. Once that happens, it may be catastrophic.”