Villagers in UP have set up barricades to regulate ther entry of people.
Lucknow:
The past week has seen a major sanitisation exercise in Bharkhula, a village of 2,500 people in west Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh, after a major coronavirus scare where eight members of one family tested positive in the last 10 days. All but one of them is in home isolation.
“It started with one boy. He used to work in a bank. He used to help people withdraw money. During the lockdown, he must have helped 200 people withdraw money. He was a bank sewak and must have been exposed to a coronavirus positive person,” said Basudev Singh, the village chief.
India has battled the COVID-19 pandemic for since late January but the possibility of a shift in cases from urban areas to India’s small towns and villages is worrying. A bulk of India’s rural coronavirus numbers are likely to come from states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar where a sizeable population lives in villages and small towns. From healthcare facilities, to testing to treatment, experts worry whether India can rise up to the challenge.
Ten kilometres away from Bharkhula, residents of the Aasna village are worried too – there have been four coronavirus cases in the past week here, adding to just two cases reported here since March.
A major sanitisation drive has been undertaken in several villages.
Deepti Upadhyaya works with an insurance company and travels 30 km each day between her village home and Aligarh town office. “I take all precautions when I come. I sanitise myself totally before I even touch my kids at home. There is some fear in the village, but yes everyone is taking some precautions at my home. There are others who go out for work in my family but we try and take all precautions. Many in our village work in factories, in units, so maybe the infection is spreading from those areas,” said Deepti.
Aligarh, a western Uttar Pradesh district with a 65 per cent rural population has seen a 29 percent jump in cases between August 17 and 24 and has reported more than 150 new coronavirus cases each day for the last three days.
COVID-19 cases in east Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur – again a largely rural area – spiked by 36 per cent between August 17 – 24, and cases in Prayagraj went up by 31 per cent in the same time.
In contrast, Delhi’s total cases seem to have grown by less than 6 per cent in this same period. Delhi is a metropolis that has grappled with the infection in the last few months and seen huge spikes in the past.
With numbers indicating a spread of COVID-19 to Uttar Pradesh’s rural areas, the big question – can health infrastructure, testing facilities, critical care units cope? “We are fully prepared,” said Chandra Bhushan Singh, Aligarh’s district magistrate.
“We have decided to carry out 4,000 daily tests. We want to keep on increasing our testing. We have 250 beds at our district L2 hospital, and 100 patients. We are increasing capacity by 100 beds. We have adequate ventilators. A total of 25-30 ventilators. We are targeting daily 2,500 tests in our rural areas spread across five tehsils,” said Mr Singh.
