Laxity in enforcement of norms aggravates Covid spread in Kerala homes

While laxity of the Covid infected in strictly following the social distancing norms while remaining on home isolation was considered to be a reason for Covid surge in Kerala, the enforcement agencies also seem to have lowered their guard in ensuring proper home quarantine.

Earlier once a person was tested Covid positive and remained on home quarantine, the health workers and local police used swung into action by constantly ringing up the infected and enquiring about the health condition. All sorts of support like supply of essential commodities to households were also offered. But now such sort of vigil was not taking place, says some of the infected.

A section of health and police officials said that as the Covid situation was prolonging for more than a year, the monitoring systems were exhausted and this was leading to laxity in the enforcement. As life returned to normalcy with easing of lockdown the police were again burdened with routine responsibilities. Hence it would be quite difficult to dedicate much time for vigil on those in home quarantine, a police officer commented.

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Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Health Minister Veena George had been reiterating that laxity of the infected in strictly following the social distancing inside home was aggravating the present Covid surge in Kerala. A health department study also found that 35 per cent of fresh Covid cases being reported in Kerala now was due to spread from inside homes.

Meanwhile, the fresh Covid cases reported in Kerala witnessed a fall to 19,622 however, the number of samples tested was also considerably low. The TPR of the day was 16.74 per cent. During the last few days around 30,000 fresh cases were being reported daily and the TPR was hovering around 20 percent. Samples tested during the day was 1.17 lakh, while it was around 1.7 lakh in the past few days.