E-Paper
Amid raging Covid-19 pandemic, Telangana villages remain free from virus
Dammayyapeta, a small village of Kodimyal block in Jagitial district of Telangana has not reported even a single case of Covid-19.
At a time when the second wave of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has been wreaking havoc in the entire country, some villages in Telangana remain unaffected by the dreaded infection, at least till now, HT has learnt.
Take the case of Dammayyapeta, a small village of Kodimyal block in Jagitial district. Tucked away a little deeper from the main road and surrounded by hillocks, this village, with 293 houses and a total population of 1,144, has not reported even a single case of Covid-19.
“Most of the youth in the village are educated and have been reading about the Covid-19 in the newspapers and watching it on the television. But we have been following the suggestions given by the health department officials to keep the virus at bay,” Dammayyapeta sarpanch Tuniki Narsaiah told HT.
The villagers have been following strict Covid-19 restrictions ever since the first wave of Covid-19 struck the country in March 2020. “We held a meeting of gram panchayat and adopted a resolution on how to follow the rules and avoid spreading of Covid-19. It has yielded good results; touchwood, we haven’t witnessed even a single case of the infection in our village till now,” Narsaiah said.
Interestingly, the houses in the village are built in a peculiar pattern for several decades. There is at least 10 metres gap between any two houses. “This has made things easy for people to maintain adequate social distance. We made wearing of masks compulsory for all the villagers,” the sarpanch said.
There have been no public gatherings and community celebrations in Dammayyapeta for the last year. “It was a collective decision by the entire village. The weddings are confined only to the families of the grooms and the brides. Unlike in the past, no relatives or friends are allowed and no marriage feasts,” K Sudhakar, a village youth, said.
The gram panchayat officials have been sanitising the village with sodium hypochlorite solution once in three days. “We are not permitting any outsider to enter the village unless there are valid reasons and only if the person has no Covid-19 symptoms. However, we are not insisting such people produce a Covid-19 negative certificate,” Narsaiah said.
The villagers have also been asked not to go out of the village unless it is very essential. “They are following all the Covid-19 protocols when they go out and return to the village. Even those running provision stores in the village go out of the village to fetch commodities only once or twice a month,” he said.
Most of the villagers are farmers and about 200-250 people work as labourers who regularly go on work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme. They wear masks and maintain strict physical distancing. “We did not have a problem in selling our agriculture produce as the agriculture department officials set up a procurement centre near the village,” Venkataiah, a farmer, said.
Another tribal village Jagannathpur of Raikal block of the same district has also managed to remain free from Covid-19 in the second wave. This village, inhabited by the Gond tribes, has a population of around 1,000 people and none of them have tested positive for Covid-19 till date.
“The credit goes to the villagers who take collective decisions to follow strict Covid-19 guidelines,” said Vijaya, sarpanch of the village.
When contacted, Jagitial district medical and health officer Puppala Sridhar said the medical teams had been visiting the villages regularly to conduct fever survey and identify Covid-19 patients. “It is really commendable that some of these villages have been following the Covid-19 guidelines sincerely to avoid the spread of the virus – a sense which is lacking in many urban areas,” he said.
Unconfirmed reports said three tribal villages in Nirmal district, Pentadari, Ippacharmi and Lakshmi Nagar of Saarangapur block, besides Gollapalli village of Devaruppula block of Jangaon district, and Chainpaka village of Chityal block in Jayashankar Bhupalpalli district, have also reported zero Covid-19 cases this year so far.
