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Ahmedabad under hard lockdown as Covid-19 cases near 5,000
Ahmedabad is the worst affected district in Gujarat, followed by Surat, which has 772 cases, Vadodara 421, Bhavanagar 82 and Anand 76.
The Gujarat government on Wednesday imposed a hard lockdown in Ahmedabad to curb the spread of Covid-19 and warned off a punishment under the Epidemic Diseases Act for violators.
The city has recorded 4,735 positive coronavirus disease cases till Wednesday and 298 deaths. It accounts for 70% of the total 6,662 cases in the state, and 74% of the 396 deaths.
According to a government order, everything except ATMs and health facilities will be closed from midnight on Wednesday. Only three transport of milk and vegetables will be allowed, an order issued by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation said.
“For effective implementation of social distancing and to minimize crowding to reduce the spread of infection in the city of Ahmedabad, all shops shall be closed except providing only milks and medicines,” said Ahmedabad municipal commissioner Mukesh Kumar. “Those failing to obey these orders shall be penalized under section 188 and 270 of IPC and section 3 of the Epidemic Disease Act,” he said.
Kumar replaced the former commissioner Vijay Mehra on Tuesday when Mehra was quarantined after coming in contact with a person who tested positive for the coronavirus disease.
Ahmedabad is the worst affected district in the state, followed by Surat, which has 772 cases, Vadodara 421, Bhavanagar 82 and Anand 76. Out of these 368 deaths, 273 are from Ahmedabad, 33 from Surat, 30 from Vadodra and rest from other districts.
Of all the cases in Ahmedabad, about one-fourth are from Jamalpur, a locality of 3.5 lakh people in central Ahmedabad.
“When the first case was reported from Jamalpur on March 19, nobody took it seriously. The person was tested and sent back home. Even contract tracing was not done properly, let alone isolating his family,” said a senior Gujarat government official, who did not wish to be named.
The official, who is a part of the team working on containment strategy for Ahmedabad, said the lockdown norms were not properly implemented and there were no efforts to identify those infected. “In the first week to 10 days [of the lockdown], only those who visited the hospital with Covid-19 symptoms were tested. No random testing was done,” he said.
Gujarat chief minister, Vijay Rupani in an interview to HT had attributed the high number of cases to large number of international and domestic travelers. “There was a complete ban on movement of people. However, Gujarat is one of the leading states in India with a large number of international and domestic travellers. This increases the possibility of more cases. By the time we registered our first case on March 19, we’d screened around 30,000 passengers and put them under quarantine. We ensured strict implementation of MHA guidelines,” Rupani had said.
The chief minister said a large number of people, who attended the Tablighi Jamaat Markaz in New Delhi, came back and by the time the officials could track them, they had already come in contact with a large number of people. “This led to the rise of cases. Another reason for rise in cases is our intensive testing capacity. With a capacity of 3,000 per day, we have tested around 80,000 people till date,” he said.
Experts, however, attributed the high numbers to failure to enforce lockdown stricly.
Dr Parthiv Mehta, an Ahmedabad based pulmonologist, said, “Enforcement has improved now. We need special audit of all deaths to find out how many died because of co-morbid conditions as Gujarat has high incident of diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.”
