COVID-19 Is Moving To The Small Towns, Villages In India; It Seems We Are Not Prepared For It

Since India began reporting COVID-19 cases in large numbers, in March, it was mostly limited to big cities and mostly among those with travel history.

In the next couple of months too, the pattern continued and even now the big cities account for the majority of the cases being reported.

But there is a development that could even spell danger for the entire country.

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While the COVID-19 cases in big cities are either reaching their peak or have plateaued, smaller towns are reporting an increase in the number of cases.

There is a fear that small towns in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar could soon become COVID-19 hotspots as the virus makes inroads to the not-so developed areas.

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This fear is not unfounded as just last week, there was a major coronavirus scare in Bharkhula, a village of 2,500 people in west Uttar Pradesh's Aligarh where eight members of one family tested positive in the last 10 days.

Gorakhpur in UP, in the past 24 hours, 162 new COVID-10 cases were reported and three patients have also died. Gorakhpur has so far seen 8434 COVID-19 cases.

Another small town that is causing some concerns due to the rise in the number of COVID-19 infections is Karnala in Haryana.

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The district has seen only 2,473 COVID-19 cases compared to the more than 10,000 in Faridabad and Gurugram, the numbers are rising there rapidly.

In the past 24 hours alone over 100 new infections were reported there.

The rise in COVID-19 cases in small towns and villages is not limited to north India. Rajakkad, a small town in Kerala's Idukki district was under a total lockdown for weeks last month 70 COVID-19 cases and two deaths were reported from there in a matter of days.

Even Poonturan, where the Kerala government confirmed that there was community transmission of COVID-19 is a small fishermen village.

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The biggest threat of the virus spreading to the small towns and villages is the lack of testing and treatment facilities there.

Unlike in the big cities, people have to wait for days to get themselves tested and the nearest could be hours away.

A recent survey by Community Social Media platform Local Circles showed that 58 per cent of people believe small towns and rural districts are "unprepared" to handle the pandemic.

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The survey received over 24,000 votes from 242 districts of the country. 65 per cent respondents were male while the remaining 35 per cent were women.

Only 5 per cent respondents said small towns and rural districts were "well prepared" to handle epidemic while 25 per cent said they were "somewhat prepared". 31 per cent participants feel that they were "quite unprepared" while 27 per cent said they were "extremely unprepared".