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Panic buying in Tamil Nadu as shops open ahead of intense lockdown
During the extended lockdown, no shops will be allowed to open and the horticulture department will supply vegetables and fruits through 4,380 mobile carts. Only drug stores will remain open and supply of milk, water and newspapers will continue.
Hundreds of people thronged markets and showrooms as the Tamil Nadu government came under criticism for opening up all shops except malls, over the weekend, ahead of the one-week intense lockdown that will be imposed from May 24.
To allow people to stock up provisions and vegetables, the government relaxed restrictions on May 22 and May 23 and allowed shops to remain open till 9 pm during which public transport also functioned. This not only led to panic buying but people were also seen shopping for textiles, jewellery, visiting salons and heavy traffic jams were seen in Chennai, Madurai and Trichy among other districts.
During the extended lockdown, no shops will be allowed to open and the horticulture department will supply vegetables and fruits through 4,380 mobile carts. Only drug stores will remain open and supply of milk, water and newspapers will continue.
The state’s on-going lockdown was from May 10 to 24 which has been extended on the advice of medical experts who estimate Covid-19 cases to peak by the end of May. Following that, chief minister MK Stalin also led an all-party meeting of legislators before making the announcement on Saturday. “It is sad that people treated the lockdown like a holiday and not as an emergency caused by Covid-19,” said Stalin at the meeting. He added that health and frontline workers cannot be burdened more and that the pandemic had to be brought under control so that educational institutions can also function soon.
The expert committee had recommended extending the lockdown by at least two-weeks and to make it stringent as cases and deaths are continuing to rise and the time can be used for increasing health infrastructure, testing and surveillance. “We give strategic advice based on the disease. But how the government implements a lockdown is their administrative decision,” said one of the members on the condition of anonymity. “There is no other choice except going for a continued lockdown as cases are rising fast in the districts. Though Covid-19 cases in Chennai aren’t rising anymore, 99% of ICUs are occupied, hospitals are unable to shift people from oxygen support to ICUs, so the decline isn’t enough.”
Doctors are concerned that the crowding over the weekend will lead to a spike. “By giving the people a free hand to do anything today and sending a message that it will be strict tomorrow onwards has given a sense of less fear,” said Dr Deepak Subramanian, deputy medical superintendent, GEM hospital, Chennai. “This crowding is not right at this stage. This is going to have an impact in the coming days. Chennai was flattening the curvebut I hope this doesn’t make it worse.”
Public health experts are of the opinion that the state could have extended the lockdown by continuing the existing restrictions as they were and shouldn’t have permitted non-essential services. “It is a miscalculation. I don’t see malice, they just botched up,” says Dr J Amalorpavanathan, a public health expert and former member secretary of the Transplant Authority of Tamil Nadu.
“The lockdown was beginning to show its results and they could have continued allowing essentials like buying vegetables for a few hours every day. Everybody will not have bulk cash when a government cart comes, you don’t know at what time it will come and it can’t enter narrow slums. Opening for 24-hours and then closing for a week isn’t logical. The government may not have anticipated what happened today. It’s frightening. I think the workers inside textile and jewellery shops would be the super spreaders because they were exposed to the crowds for more than 8-hours. Most of them wouldn’t have been vaccinated.”
