Despite curfew, people step out of houses to buy essential items

Sukhmeet Bhasin

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, March 25

Despite no relaxation in curfew, people violated the order in several parts of the city on Wednesday and thronged to the vegetable market and a petrol pump to purchase essential items.

In the morning, a huge rush was witnessed at the main vegetable market and the petrol pump in Model Town Phase 2 area. Only two petrol pumps are open for public.

Several people came out of their houses to buy necessary ration, vegetables and milk in various areas on Wednesday morning but some were forced to return homes without getting the required grocery items due to curfew. People on Wednesday purchased vegetables and fruit in bulk from the wholesale market in the city.

A vegetable vendor said, "As there is panic among people, they are purchasing vegetables in bulk, especially potatoes and onion, which can be preserved for a longer shelf life."

Even on social media, appeals were made throughout the day to stock up ration items to avoid any difficulty in the next few days as they do not know till how long this lockdown would last. People were seen advising each other to stay home, stay safe.

Moreover, high and middle-class families were able to buy essential items in bulk in the last week, but poor people and daily-wage earners were worst hit as they did not have the money to buy items in bulk and with no work in hand these days, they did not have anything to feed their family.

Many such families are in the Krishna Nagar, Dhobiana Basti, Bangi Nagar, Hazi Rattan areas and various other areas in the city, which need a helping hand from the administration and the public to help them in this hour of crisis.

Even long queues were also witnessed on the Bhatti road where people, forgetting social distancing, gathered to take milk, paneer and other items from a Verka vehicle. It was also seen that instead of distributing milk from door to door, Verka vehicle was parked at one point and residents rushed there to get it.

Later in the day, the police got strict and even got the two petrol pumps, which were operating in the city, closed. Moreover, even the police stopped persons roaming roads and asked them to go back to their houses at the earliest or else they would take action against them.

4 stages of pandemic

Stage 1: Cases mostly reported from affected countries

Stage 2: Local transmission from positive cases

Stage 3: Disease spreads in community, large areas gets affected

Stage 4: Disease takes shape of epidemic with no clear end point. China and Italy are already there

How we can keep it in stage II

Quarantine: Anyone coming from foreign country is quarantined for 14 days

Contact tracing: If a person has been found positive, everybody he or she may have come in contact with is put under surveillance and quarantined

Hospital preparedness: Scaling up infrastructure – testing facility, isolation beds, ventilators and acute management of positive cases

Tracking Covid in humans

Source: A retrospective study on clinical course and risk factors for mortality in 191 adult patients from Jinyintan Hospital and Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital published in The Lancet

Day 1-3

Onset of symptoms (80% patients get these mild symptoms)

• Sars-CoV-2 virus may start with upper respiratory symptoms after the incubation period
• Fever generally appears on first day
• Upper respiratory system such as cough and sore throat may appear by Day 3

Day 4-9

In the lungs (14% of those infected experience these symptoms)

• Disease may reach anywhere between three and four days
• Laboured breathing may start from fourth to ninth day
• Inflammation in lungs may lead to acute respiratory distress

Day 8-15

In the blood (5% of infected need ICU care)

• From the lungs, the infection may move to the blood
• Sepis, a life-threatening complication may develop by the end of first week