JOIN USOnly 3% migrants returning to UP test COVID-19 positive: Report
The Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme data shows that out of the 74,237 migrants who have been tested for novel coronavirus after returning to Uttar Pradesh, about 3.2 percent have tested positive, according to a report by The Indian Express. According to the data, at present, about 11.68 lakh migrants are under surveillance in the state.
Of more than 3.7 lakh samples that have been tested, 24 percent are of migrants who have been returning to the state since the last two months. A total of 8,729 samples tested positive, out of which 27.5 percent are of migrants.
The state’s overall positivity rate stands at 2.85 percent, which remains close to the positivity rate among migrants. Over the last ten days, the average has largely remained the same.
However, though Uttar Pradesh is the top destination of migrants, the positivity rate in the state stands in clear contrast to states like Maharashtra (15 percent), Gujarat (8 percent), and Delhi (9 percent).
The heavy influx of migration has spread the virus to 75 districts in the state. Quoting the President of Public Health Foundation of India and a member of the high-level committee of public experts for COVID-19, K Srinath Reddy, the publication suggested that there has been no exponential growth in the coronavirus cases due to migration.
“I have been saying from the beginning that the migrants did not pose a threat. They should have been assisted in being sent back right at the beginning of the lockdown. The reasons are that, basically, people who brought in the virus are foreign travellers. They spread the virus and their primary contacts were the people who secondarily spread the virus,” Reddy told the publication.
He stressed that migrants have a very low exposure rate to the virus because of the nature of their occupation and that the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme data confirms it.
“Migrants are not the population, in sense of their occupation and place of residence, who would have come in contact with these people. The nature of their occupation was very different like construction sites or in very low-income dwellings. Their likelihood of having the virus by March 25 was very remote. If they had been assisted with being sent back, we would not have seen this problem. But having kept them in urban hotspots, for almost eight weeks, there was a danger they might have actually carried the virus. However, compared to others, their exposure rates would have been much less. The data now confirms that,” he added.