Do away with home isolation model : Asymptomatic cases
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: May 24, 2021 -

Home isolation should be done away with for this is a flawed line of thinking. There is a reason why the Chief Minister is now so much concerned with patients under home isolation.

What works in Europe or even in cities like New Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata will not work here and this is a plain fact that should register in the mind of the Government.

Just take a look at how many households or family live. Majority or nearly 90 percent of the family live with one toilet or bathroom.

Moreover it is only those who can afford that separate rooms are given for each child.

Here it is not surprising to see young children sharing the same room-Say two brothers or two sisters sharing the same room.

Again the same family, say with seven or eight family members share the same bathroom, that is if there is a bathroom at all.

This has been the living style of the people and refusing to acknowledge this would be criminal.

And it stands that asymptomatic people are the best agents to carry and spread the virus. This is what is exactly happening in Manipur.

Say a family of seven has one member who is Covid positive, but opts for home isolation.

The Government may mark the homestead as a containment zone, but how many of the other family members move around freely in the neighbourhood?

This is a question which the Government should have considered long time back, for ultimately it is the asymptomatic persons who spread the virus and not the person down with the infection.

How about contact tracing? Is the Government really serious about the line ‘contact tracing’?

Ask anyone who has recovered from the disease and one will get a fair idea of how serious the Government is about the all important process of contact tracing.

These are the hard facts that the Government has to deal with, however unpalatable it may be.

Manipur has its own lifestyle, and a house here will be very different from say a house in Delhi or Mumbai. A bare fact which should register with the Government.

For starters, admit that cases of home isolation is one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the virus.

No survey or investigation has been done along this line so far, but it makes no sense for positive persons to be made to spend the recovery time at home when the reality says that the infected person may not have his or her own room, a separate bathroom or toilet.

The statistics says it all. On May 22, out of 3,163 samples tested, 757 were found positive. This means a very high rate with 23.9 pc of the total tested.

In simple words this means that out of every 100 persons tested, 24 persons returned positive results. This is a disturbing situation.

Now with Back Fungus having made its way to Assam, Manipur may soon see cases of the disease and this is scary.

What steps has the Government taken to meet the challenges ahead? How about the task ahead of dealing with the third wave of the pandemic?

This question is relevant in the face of numerous experts predicting that India will see a third wave of the pandemic.

Enough time was wasted before the onset of the more deadly second wave, and though the Government may be hard pressed to meet the present challenge, it should gear up to meet the third wave of the pandemic.

For starters see that the oxygen plants get to work as soon as possible and give more teeth to RIMS and JNIMS and the other private hospitals.