E-Paper
Epicentre Bapu Dham Colony accounts for 72% of Chandigarh’s total cases
Of the total 189 cases in the colony, 146 were reported after May 3, when curfew was lifted in most of the remaining city
One month after the first Covid-19 case was reported in Bapu Dham Colony on April 24, the area, which has since become Chandigarh’s epicentre, now accounts for city’s 72% positive cases.
Of the total 262 cases confirmed in the city since March 18, when UT’s first case came to fore, 189 are from the congested colony in Sector 26, which has 2,500 multi-storey houses.
While the curfew was lifted in most of the remaining city on May 3, Bapu Dham Colony continued to be sealed. But there have been 146 more cases since.
Sporadic testing, scattered use of institutional quarantine and poor enforcement of social distancing norms within the containment zone are behind UT administration’s failure to break the chain of infection in the colony, say health experts. Residents trying to sneak out of the colony, while even clashing with cops on duty, are another challenge.
QUARANTINE AND SOCIAL DISTANCING
A senior epidemiologist at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), not wishing to be named, said the consistent rise in cases made it clear that violation of the quarantine rules was rampant in the containment zone.
“Declaring an area as containment zone is not only to isolate a certain population from the city, but to also ensure that the residents within the zone practice social distancing. Infection spread in Mohali’s Jawaharpur village was apparently restricted because residents adhered to social distancing and quarantine within the village. That is missing in Bapu Dham Colony,” said the expert.
An internal report prepared by Chandigarh Police had recently flagged violation of social distancing in Bapu Dham Colony as people were freely roaming even during the night curfew.
A report by five experts from different departments of PGIMER also suggested that colony residents, irrespective of their health status, should be quarantined at some different location as was done in the case of Dharavi in Mumbai.
However, the administration’s efforts in this regard were too little, too late.
Two quarantine facilities were set up at girls’ hostel number 8 at Panjab University and Government Model School, Raipur Kalan, only on May 22, when the number of cases in the colony had reached 147.
“We have seen family members of several positive cases interacting freely with their neighbours and roaming around. By using institutional quarantine early, this could have been avoided and the infection chain broken,” said Varinder Pal, a resident living in the containment zone.
TESTING PICKING UP ONLY NOW
From April 24 – when the first surfaced in the area – till May 18, only 569 people were tested in the colony, out of which 128 residents were found infected.
On May 22, the UT health department scaled up testing, and decided to test all residents living in the same building as positive persons. Since then, 272 residents have been sampled at the sampling centre set up in the colony itself.
“The testing has not been aggressive. Most people live in one-room dwellings and the administration has practiced the same approach as that for well-organised colonies. Testing of not only close contacts, but also of immediate neighbours is important here. What they are doing now, should have been done when the number of cases was inching towards the 100 mark,” the PGIMER epidemiologist said.
