Infections rise in four states after migrants return

Migrant workers left jobless by the lockdown imposed to check the pandemic spread in late March have been cycling and walking back to their homes from big cities like Mumbai and Delhi.

The return of migrants workers from Delhi and Mumbai, the two worst-hit cities by the Covid-19 pandemic in the country, has led to a spike in the infections in Rajasthan, Karnataka, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, multiple officials in these states said.

The number of returnees has gone up since buses in late April and special Shramik trains were arranged from them beginning May 1. (PTI file photo)

Migrant workers left jobless by the lockdown imposed to check the pandemic spread in late March have been cycling and walking back to their homes from big cities like Mumbai and Delhi. The number of returnees has gone up since buses in late April and special Shramik trains were arranged from them beginning May 1.

As many as 759 migrants have tested positive for Covid-19 since May 1 in Rajasthan. Officials said a majority of them have returned from Mumbai. Barring Jaipur, Kota, Bundi and Ganganagar, migrants have been tested positive for the disease in the rest of 29 Rajasthan districts including Bhilwara, which had reported no infections for almost 20 days.

Till now, 5,87,880 migrant workers have returned to Rajasthan and the state has 5,507 Covid-19 cases.

Rajasthan’s additional chief secretary (health) Rohit K Singh said they have marked 11 districts as red as they fear an escalation in the number of cases as most migrant workers are expected to return in the coming days. He added they were upgrading medical infrastructure in these districts like Barmer, Udaipur, Bikaner, Bhilwara, Jodhpur and Rajsamand. Singh said a majority of the workers found Covid-19 positive have returned from Mumbai and Gujarat.

Bhilwara collector Rajendra Bhatt said 42 migrants have been diagnosed with the disease and a majority of them-- 30--have returned to the district from Mumbai, followed by Gujarat (10) and Madhya Pradesh (2).

Migrant workers account for 159 out of 164 Covid-19 cases in Dungarpur and most of them have returned from Mumbai, said district collector Kana Ram. His Pali counterpart, Ansh Deep, said a majority of the infected people in his district, too, have arrived from Mumbai where they worked as vegetable, fruit and ice-cream vendors.

Bihar had tested 8,337 out of 5.30 lakh migrants (1.57%) who have returned to the state till Monday.

Bihar’s principal secretary (health) Sanjay Kumar said 26% of the migrant workers tested Covid-19 positive have returned from Delhi. “Of the 8,337 samples of migrant tested so far, 651 (8%) have been reported positive...,” Kumar said on Monday.

About half of the Covid-19 cases in Bihar (1,392) were migrants who have returned since May 3. As many as 26% of them have come from Delhi followed by 12% from West Bengal, 11% from Maharashtra, 9% from Haryana and 7% from Gujarat. “The health department has been very attentive to the arrival of migrants and [is] analysing data on a continuous basis,” Kumar said.

Bihar had received 530,000 migrant workers until Sunday and around a million were expected to return by May 27.

According to the Karnataka health department’s data, migrants from Mumbai accounted for 66 of the 99 new cases reported on Monday. A few of the cases were of people, who have returned from Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. Karnataka has reported 1,692 total cases and half of them are those, who have retuned to the state after May 1.

Uttar Pradesh has not provided data on how many migrant workers have tested positive, but health officials said a large number of them, who have returned from Delhi and Mumbai, have been diagnosed with the disease.

“More than half of the workers, who have tested positive, are from Delhi and about one-fourth from Mumbai. Fortunately, all of them are in quarantine centres and have no symptoms,” said an official in Saharanpur district, who did not want to be named.

Gujarat’s southern districts have reported a surge in Covid-19 cases due to the return of migrants from neighbouring Maharashtra. One-third of the total Covid-19 cases in Odisha are migrants who have returned to the state from Gujarat’s Surat. “In districts such as Dang, Narmada and Valsad, many of the new cases are of the persons who have returned from Mumbai or Pune in Maharashtra,” Gujarat health secretary Jayanthi Ravi said.