Covid spike in Haryana

With the government preparing to open hotels, restaurants and malls, besides religious places, from today, there has been concern over a surge in Covid cases in the districts of Haryana bordering Delhi like Gurugram, Faridabad, Sonepat and Jhajjar. Gurugram and Faridabad alone account for nearly two-third of Haryana’s coronavirus cases, and have now been put outside the ambit of relaxations that the rest of the state will witness. The reason is said to be inefficient contact tracing and sketchy containment of the affected areas. Health officials said the decision to send suspected cases back home rather than isolate them, besides the delay in tracing contacts of those testing positive at private labs is behind the rise. The private labs have also not shared details of those testing negative. The spike is said to have taken place in the past 10 days, which puts a question mark on the efficacy of the preventive steps taken, considering that the lockdown has been in effect for over two months now.

Haryana has insisted it is getting ready to open schools in July and colleges in August. The state’s Education Minister, Kanwar Pal Gujjar, said people cannot sit at home forever due to the fear of the pandemic. “We need to do all our work, so factories and markets have opened and the schools will open soon too,” he said, while failing to explain the same urgency for the areas excluded. Earlier, there has been a row over the sealing of borders by the states, forcing the Centre to tell Haryana, UP and Delhi to come up with uniform travel guidelines to remove hassles. This has to be done at the earliest so that people can commute to their place of work smoothly. These states need to assess the transmission in their containment zones so that life can limp back to normalcy.

The lockdown technically extends till June 30. It is hoped that by that time, the situation would become conducive to resuming international flights and business in various sectors can get a boost in the national capital and its adjoining states. Reeling under the impact of the lockdown, it will take time to pick up the pieces. But the need is to plug the gaps in healthcare system. Business will then get a kickstart.