- Monday, May 06, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE South Indian state of Kerala is yet to overcome its Covid-related challenges but yet on Tuesday (29), it has allowed ferrying bodies of victims of the virus to their homes to enable the kin to conduct their last rites in a time-bound manner. Under the pandemic protocol, bodies of those who have died of the virus have not been allowed to be laid at their homes.
Kerala continues to witness a grim situation even though the devastating second wave of the pandemic has subsided in various parts of India. The state continues to add five-digit cases daily and its test positivity rate (TPR) has kept on hovering around 10 per cent for the last week as against the national weekly figure of 2.74 per cent. Of the 0.55 million active cases in the entire country, Kerala accounts for 0.1 million.
Yet, the state government has decided not to ignore the humane side. After a review meeting held recently, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan told reporters that one of the biggest tragedies during the pandemic was that relatives could not see the bodies of their loved ones who died of Covid.
Government allows an hour’s time
“The government wants that the bodies of Covid-19 victims should be laid for homage at their homes for a specific time and for conducting rituals as per their faith. An hour would be allowed for this,” he said.
Admitting that the state’s overall Covid situation remains a concern, Vijayan said,“We could gradually bring down the TPR from 29.75 per cent to 10 per cent. But there is no further decline on expected lines. It is a concern that the TPR is not going below 10 per cent. Last week’s figures show there is no fall in the number of active cases.”
The chief minister of India’s only Left-ruled state said the highly infectious Delta variant of the virus is causing the brisk spread of the infection in the state. He said although the second wave of the pandemic hit the state much faster than the first, it was arrested in such a manner that the health infrastructure could deal with the caseload.
Asserting that Kerala adopted the strategy of delaying the peak of the infection, Vijayan said, “What had happened in places where that could not be adopted? We have seen people queuing up at crematoriums with bodies. What we have tried in Kerala is to avoid such a situation.”
The chief minister said it would take more time for the second wave to decline in Kerala and hence there was no reason to become complacent and relax the restrictions.
