How Did Indore, India's Cleanest City End Up Being A COVID-19 Hotspot?
Over the past few years, Indore in Madhya Pradesh has made a reputation for being the cleanest city in India.Four years in a row, the city bagged the top position in the Central government's cleanliness survey and has an impeccable record when it comes to waste management and household-waste segregation.
But now Indore is making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Indore has more COVID-19 cases than some of the biggest cities in the country.On Thursday morning, Indore had 151 COVID-19 positive cases, neatly half of the 347 infections reported in the whole of Madhya Pradesh.?The city has also seen 16 deaths due to the virus.?
This puts the city on the list that has a population of over 30 lakh along with Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Delhi, which have the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the country.?
According to residents, the local administration had failed to act in the initial stage which has left the city in condition what it is in now.?
"In the beginning, the health department focused on screening those who arrived in Indore via Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat after returning from abroad. This was a major error of judgment as Indore is a commercial city and thousands of people arrive and leave through railway and road. But such visitors were not screened initially," Amulya Nidhi, an activist in the health sector told PTI.?
The district administration announced lockdown in the city from March 23. After the first coronavirus cases were reported in the city, it imposed a total curfew in the city."I feel that in a densely populated city like Indore, lockdown should have been announced from the beginning of March," Nidhi said.?
Despite the number of cases on the rise the administration has ruled out community transmission and said that the infection is limited to some clusters.?
"There is no community transmission-like situation in the city. The majority of coronavirus cases are coming from a few particular pockets of the city," Salil Sakalle, head of the medicine department of the government-run Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College said.?
He also pointed out that most of those died due to the infection had other health conditions. "Most of the patients who succumbed to the disease were admitted to hospitals late, and many were already suffering from other ailments besides COVID-19," he said.?
Currently, Indore, being one of the COVID-19 hotspots in the country, is under a strict lockdown and the local administration has made arrangements for home delivery of essential items such as milk, groceries, potatoes and onions so that people need not step out.Sakalle also said that the curfew in the city should be extended beyond April 14 to contain the spread of the virus.?
Recently, the city had also made headlines after medical professionals who were screening suspected COVID-19 patients came under a mob attack in the Patti Bakhal area of Indore.?
The health officials who had gone to the area to screen some people who had returned from Delhi after attending religious gathering when they were pelted with stones, leaving two women doctors injured.? ??
