Being Lauded As Role Model To Facing Total Lockdown, What Happened To Kerala Model In COVID-19
Just a few months ago international media was going gaga over the so-called Kerala Model that helped the state to contain the spread of COVID-19 there, while most of the other states in India and the majority of the world was struggling.
From BBC to The Guardian, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Economist and many more had featured the success story of Kerela and was discussing what the world can learn from the south Indian state.
But come July, Kerala is on the verge of a total lockdown as the number of COVID-19 cases in the state is spiraling out of control.
On Wednesday, for the first time since COVID-19 was reported in Kerala in January, the number of daily infections breached the 1000-mark and recorded 1038 cases in the past 24 hours.
This has taken the total number of cases in the state to 15032, out of which 8818 are active.
A total of 6162 people have recovered and 45 have died in the state due to COVID-19.
In early May, there was a time when Kerala did not report any new cases for three days and just 34 people were under treatment for COVID-19 in hospitals.?
But COVID-19 cases in Kerala began rising once again after the government started repatriating NRIs who were stuck in COVID-19 affected countries.
Some of the first repatriation flights were to Kerala from the middle east.
This was followed by the gradual relaxation of the nationwide lockdown, which allowed lakhs of Keralites who were working and living in other states to travel back to their hometowns.
Those returning from abroad account majority cases
Until recently those returning from abroad or other states accounted for the majority of the cases reported in Kerala every day.
But it began changing earlier this month and local transmissions and infections from unknown sources stated overtaking those who came from outside.
It had reached a point where parts of the state capital were placed under a 'triple lockdown' after some fishermen villages there became major COVID-19 hotspots.?
Last week, Kerala became the first Indian state to acknowledge that there is community transmission of COVID-19, something that other states with a much higher number of infections and the ICMR has so far refused to do.
On Wednesday, during his daily press briefing, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that a total lockdown will be considered if the conditions do not improve.
So what went wrong in Kerala?
The initial success of Kerala was due to its robust public healthcare system, which is one of the best in India, and the state's ability to trace and track every single primary and secondary contact of infected patients.??
But once the number of patients started increasing, doing contact tracing at a much larger level became impossible and it further worsened due to local transmissions, resulting in the high number of COVID-19 cases where the source of the infection is unknown.
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Much like the rest of India, Kerala too was eager to get its economy back on track after the lockdown. And as businesses, public transport, and inter-district travel resumed the virus also spread, which has been the same story elsewhere in the country.
Rising death toll
When the Kerala model was being celebrated, the state had recorded just four COVID-19 deaths, which has since gone up to 45. On average Kerala is recording 1-2 deaths every day in the past two weeks.
The politics of COVID-19
When the Kerala model was making headlines around the world, the Congress-led opposition refused to give the government credit for it. The leader of the opposition claimed that the Kerala Health Minister was having a media mania and that all the reports praising the Kerala model were the work of PR agencies. Another Congress MP went a step further and claimed that the low number of COVID-19 cases in the state had nothing to do with the government's work as coronavirus won't survive in a temperature above 30 degrees.
A government mired in controversy?
While it was busy in dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak, the Kerala government was struck by a series of corruption charges an allegation of data privacy breach after it engaged Sprinklr, a US-based software company owned by a Kerala origin man to handle the data of COVID-19 patients.?
Then came the big one.
Earlier this month two ex-UAE consulate staffers were arrested in Kerala for smuggling gold in diplomatic baggage. One of the accused, Swapna Suresh was a contractual employee of a firm that was working with the IT Department of Kerala Government. As the investigation continued, several people close to the CM including Principal Secretary Shivashankar are on the dock, giving ammunition for the opposition to target the government. These days the CM, in his daily press briefing spends more time defending his government than talking about COVID-19.
So, was the Kerala Model a failure all the way?
Not really and it is by far one of the best out there. In fact, Kerala had anticipated a second wave, once people from outside the state starts coming in. Unlike many other states, there is no shortage of hospital beds for COVID-19 patients even now.
The triple lockdown in Thiruvananthapuram and plans for a total lockdown also shows that the government is still in control and these steps are more anticipatory than last resort. The death toll of 45 too is not alarming as the COVID-19 mortality rate in Kerala is just 0.3 percent against the national average of 2.43.
