- P. Prasad

Rangat, Aug 9: Till mid-June, everybody including the authorities here were very callous and thought that COVID-19 was well under control and not likely to spread in the community due to the physical isolation of various islands from one another. But ironically proving everyone wrong, Covid has reached almost all the densely populated Islands of South Andaman and North & Middle Andaman District. The tribal district of Nicobar is also no exception to this as it reached Car Nicobar.

If it is not contained in Car Nicobar right at the budding stage, it is going to be a great challenge to the Administration. Whatever be the very cause of this outbreak here in Andaman after it was successfully contained for almost 4 months, I would take this opportunity to hold everyone responsible for it. May it be failure of monitoring mechanism or the decision on the part of Administration to regulate unlock phase or last but not the least the public cooperation by adhering to the guidelines or  protocols associated to it. Now the challenges we face here are numerous.

1. Due to inadequate testing facilities even patients who are supposed to undergo general surgery relating to delivery or otherwise are made to wait for the Covid test report for more than a week.
2. There must be priority testing of Health workers, other patients awaiting surgical procedures so that the health service system may not be disrupted.
3. Positive cases are now kept in home isolation where family members with comorbidity, aged and children are at greater risk. There must be some routine monitoring system or reverse quarantine system in force to take care of the vulnerable members in the family.
4. Augmentation of support system in hospitals especially in Port Blair and North and Middle Andaman where cases are on spike.
5. Private hospitals to be designated as Covid Centres so that services can be availed by those who could afford the medical expenditure.
6. More testing Centers to be opened it can also be assigned to private hospitals with well-equipped laboratories.
7. PPE kit and other protective gears to be easily available to all the health staff who are on duty in hospitals without regard to their duty place since due to asymptomatic character of Covid, many patients get hospitalized for other illness, which ultimately poses a high risk to health staff when such patients are tested positive.
8. A team of doctors from ICMR to be deployed to immediately contain the spread so that it may not be allowed to turn into an uncontrolled phenomenon.
9. A strict monitoring mechanism to be in place and continued till a solution in the form of vaccine is developed so that it may not show its dreadful face again.

Our support in whatsoever manner shall be readily available as and when required in the battle to defeat this Virus.