Daily briefing: Covid results of migrants entering Bihar raise red flag for New Delhi

👉 Karnataka CM said people from four states — Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Kerala — would be barred from entering the state. However, the government order issued hours later has made no such mention.

👉 Kerala has allowed barber shops to open, but customers have to get their own towel.

👉 West Bengal said it won’t be imposing the night curfew on its people. But the government issued a notice later in the evening, saying there will be restriction on movement between 7 pm and 7 am.

👉 Telangana is imposing Rs 1,000 fine for those not wearing masks.

👉 Delhi said Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) shall not prevent any person from performing services and duties permitted under the guidelines. This means they cannot stop domestic helps and others from entering societies.

* Testing migrant workers who had returned to Bihar has indicated the presence of a large asymptomatic population in Delhi. Of the 835 samples taken from migrant workers who returned from Delhi, as many as 218 were Covid positive. This works out to a positivity rate of over 26%, while the rate in the national capital is about 7%.

* With the surge in migrants returning to Bihar, villages in the state have been struggling to accommodate all of them in quarantine centres. Five lakh migrants have returned, and 40,000 of them are arriving daily for the past one week. In Dhouri village, arrangements have been made to accommodate for only those coming for red zones. While people entering the state from orange and green zones are heading home.

* Meanwhile, Telangana could be sitting on a crisis of its own considering that the state had conducted just 22,842 Covid-19 tests. Neighbouring Andhra Pradesh had, by that date, conducted 2.1 lakh tests, almost ten times more than Telangana. Tamil Nadu had conducted more than 2.9 lakh tests by then. So the number of positive cases could be more than the 1,551 reported in Telangana as scientists say there is a direct correlation between the number of tests carried out and the caseload. Telangana’s defence: It was only following the guidelines of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and testing only those showing symptoms. Telangana was also not testing dead bodies until a high court order on May 14 directed it to increase the ambit of its testing umbrella. This means there is no clear picture of how many had died of Covid-19.

* Doctors had given Maharashtra Housing Minister Jitendra Ahwad a slim chance of survival — 30 per cent to be precise — after he tested postive for Covid-19 in April. He was even on ventilator for three days. Ahwad, who has successfully fought back the infection, is now full of praise for the doctors and nurses who gave him “motherly care”. “I think soon it will be like seasonal flu… we will have to live with it. We should rid people of the fear of coronavirus,” he says.

* Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal writes that the judiciary must speak up and hold the government to account on its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The fact that migrants have chosen to walk such long distances is proof enough of state apathy or inefficiency. To ensure that such facilities (relief camps) are made available is the only way the court can make the executive accountable. If courts look the other way, the executive will have a free run. Even in times of war, the Constitution is not silent. All institutions in emergencies must respect, to the extent possible, the fundamental rights of citizens.”

* On a question on migrants returning to the cities, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, who was the guest at The Indian Express e-Adda, said that while it will be difficult to get the migrant workers, who have left, to return to manufacturing hubs such as Gurugram and Pune in the short-term, the need to create “confidence in their minds” to return was essential.

* World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has announced that there will be an independent probe at the earliest into the origin of the Covid-19 virus after 61 countries, including India, moved a resolution at the World Health Assembly (WHA). The US said the pandemic had “spun out of control” in great part due to a costly “failure” by the WHO.

* Prof K Srinath Reddy, a Member of ICMR’s Covid-19 Task Force, was the guest at the first edition of E-Xplained last week. Here’s what he said on the way forward post-lockdown:

“Well I don’t think we can live in permanent imprisonment of a lockdown, we have to go mobile but also ensuring that schools reopen for children and so on. There are a lot of social elements also that need to be restored. But we have to do it with care. See, you’ll not be able to test every person on the street… but we have to depend upon physical distancing, masks in public places, as well as hand hygiene as important elements for a long time to come if we have to slow down the transmission and also ensure that the deaths are contained and not a surge. To ensure that we contain the transmission as well, as much as possible, I would particularly emphasise, containment between urban and rural areas.”

* At least three states, including Tamil Nadu, are upset at the Centre for imposing conditions on states in case they need to raise additional loans. One of the conditions cited by the Centre is discontinuation of free electricity to farmers. The Centre has asked states to switch to Direct Benefit Transfer instead.

* Super Cyclone Amphan is closing in on Odisha and West Bengal at a speed of 14 kmph. At 2.30 am, it lay 570 km south of Odisha’s Paradip, 720 km south-southwest of Digha in West Bengal. Track our live updates here.

Until tomorrow,
Leela Prasad G