FRIDAY, MAY 10, 2024
Here is statistic on the COVID-19 crisis in the State that is a major eye-opener. Yes, we can definitley call it a crisis, for after having gleefully snoozed over the fact that Goa was in a Green Zone with zero active cases, Goa has gone in a matter of days from seven cases to 198. When you put that in percentage terms, the rise has been 2828 per cent. The reason for this appears to be pretty simple. While the people may believe that the borders are being manned tightly, there is much porosity that is allowing the virus to effortlessly slip through and infect the local population, and the situation may soon begin to get unmanageable for the authorities.
The cases of COVID-19 have been rising on a daily basis, most of them now from the Mangor Hill area of Vasco, and the rest of people who have travelled to the State. Till now the administration has not been able to determine how the fisherman family from Mangor Hill that first tested positive for the virus got infected. The Chief Minister is on record saying that the family is not cooperating and is hiding facts. This is a serious matter. It cannot be forgotten that the novel coronavirus has taken lives in the country and across the world. The government has to act strictly on the matter and discover how this family got infected, which could help it plug this hole in the net thrown around the State.
On the other hand, the case in Calangute is one of possible political highhandedness. The senior citizen who has tested positive arrived from a Red Zone by road and drove to her daughter’s house having skipped the test. The Health Secretary when quizzed on this, said she has no such information. A day later the police said they would file a case against the lady and the driver of the car. The lady is also said to have attended a function, and interacted with a large number of people. The Chief Minister says the skipping of the test was human error. She is the mother-in-law of a panch of the village. Are we to assume that the traveller from Mumbai was able to escape the test at the border due to politcal influence? This is something that the government has to investigate and come clear on.
This is not the time to hide facts. The cases of COVID-19 are galloping geometrically and not arithmetically. The people in Goa have had ample patience having followed the lockdown guidelines and this is not the manner in which they should be rewarded. Let us hope that the Calangute case does not lead to more COVID-19 positive patients, but if it does, who will take responsibility for this? The law has to be the same for all, and the relative of a panch cannot be treated by any other manner. There have been allegations of people being allowed in the State without following the laid out protocol. This here is an instance that has gone horribly wrong. Will action be taken?
Goans were made to believe that Goa was safe. As repeatedly said in Herald, having zero active cases does not necessarily mean that the State was free of the deadly virus. What really altered the circumstances for Goa is the laxity at the borders. Sadly, the change has been for the worse. We still don’t know just how much further this can go and whether a government that has floundered terribly in recent weeks is up to the challenge of battling the contagion. We will know how serious this government is when the truth behind the Mangor Hill and Calangute cases is made public. One just has t re-read the statistic at the beginning of this column to realise the seriousness of the situation.
