PANJIM: While stricter lockdowns helped larger States like Maharashtra, Delhi and Kerala to bring down the daily COVID-19 graph drastically, smallest State on India’s map – Goa has largely failed to bring the situation under control despite curbs imposed for over two weeks now.
An analysis of the partial State wide curfew enforced since May 9 to combat the second wave of COVID-19 shows that Goa’s positivity rate, though dropped from 51 per cent to 30 per cent, still remains the highest in the country.
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One of the worst affected States; Maharashtra has managed to curtail the positivity rate to below 15 percent, nearly 43 days after accounting for 48.57 percent of the total active caseload of the country.
Phased lockdown (weekend lockdown) since April 5 with restrictions on movement of people in the night imposed till April 30 was an initial step towards reducing cases. The Uddhav Thackrey-government made restrictions more stringent on April 15 and a week later on April 22, the chief minister announced a complete lockdown in the State to control the deteriorating situation. On this day Maharashtra’s daily cases were registered at 67,013.
This neighbouring State had begun implementing strategies to curb the rising cases including mandatory COVID-19 negative certificate from every visitor and Goa on the other hand was still reluctant to impose restrictions.
Goa CM Pramod Sawant’s repeated statement “I am monitoring the situation” slipped out of his hands when the smallest State with around 15 lakh population began reporting rising cases.
After a hesitant decision to enforce curfew from April 29 to May 3, a State-wide curfew was announced to be effective from May 9. Ironically, a partial curfew. Goa’s daily tally had jumped to 2,633 on this day and since then new cases continue to fluctuate. On Tuesday, May 25, the daily count went on the higher side at 1,549 from 1,401 reported on the previous day and 1,621 on Sunday, May 23.
While partial curfew is extended till May 31, strict restrictions seemed to have also helped Kerala bring down cases within a span of 17 days of lockdown, until May 24. Similar is the scenario in country’s capital Delhi that proved lockdown curved the accelerating cases. Since April 19 when CM Arvind Kejriwal announced complete lockdown, it has reported lowest daily case. On April 19, Delhi’s daily count was 23,686 that dropped to 1,550 on May 24 whilst lockdown’s extension. On Tuesday, May 25, Delhi reported 1,568 new cases
Unlike Goa where hotspots and other areas are treated evenly; Maharashtra has barred home isolation in around 18 districts where positivity rate is high while Kerala government has imposed triple restriction in one district with high positivity rate. Lockdown continues while three other districts wherein triple restrictions were in force, has been lifted following reduction in cases.
