THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2024
Team Herald
PANJIM: In an interview with CNN International, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane has blamed the opening of tourism last December and the following months without any restrictions, like checking for tourists’ COVID status, for the current pandemic situation in Goa where the number of daily cases and deaths are at all time record highs.
His comments are seen as criticism of the State government’s refusal to make it mandatory for tourists to be allowed entry only if they have a COVID negative certificate, something he had suggested in public repeatedly.
“Goa being the preferred destination, we had thousands of visitors coming to Goa. Opening of tourism without any restriction in December has led to the current situation in Goa. We have 51 per cent and above positivity which is highest in the country,” Rane said on Friday night.
“We had very few restrictions at that point of time. We had the whole of India coming into the State of Goa in December, January and February and I had already alerted our health authorities that we need to be prepared because we are going to face the situation some point of time,” Rane, who was asked to explain how Goa had reached its present situation, said.
Rane, who had also publicly called for a lockdown much earlier, also told the news network that the decision on the recently imposed lockdown should have been taken a month ago. He was asked to comment on the Chief Minister announcing the lockdown on Friday.
“This should have come much earlier. If you go through my tweets, I had suggested that we go in for a stringent lockdown about more than 15 days back. Fifteen days back was also too late because we needed this lockdown for more than a month back,” Rane said.
CNN also carried a story about the surge of COVID in cases in Goa, the international tourist destination.
