Fighting Covid-19: Karnataka losing initial gains?

Karnataka appears to be fast losing the initial gains in its fight against Covid-19 due to lack of cohesion at the top, fatigue among an over-worked bureaucracy, failure to anticipate the rise in cases and total unpreparedness to deal with the emerging situation, especially in Bengaluru. As things stand today, there is already a scarcity of beds and ICU facilities though only about 0.02% of Bengaluru’s 1.2 crore population is currently undergoing treatment, and situation can easily be imagined if even 1% or 1.2 lakh people in the city contract the disease. Having failed to ramp up infrastructure during the lockdown, when it should have, the government is now aimlessly running around like a headless chicken trying to identify Covid care centres and create the required beds. With cases spiralling, the government has belatedly identified 518 private hospitals across the state to treat Covid patients, without giving them adequate notice to strengthen their internal systems like appointing qualified manpower and creating ICU facilities.

The disconnect and one-upmanship at the political level has been a stumbling block right from the start. As the pandemic unfolded, Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa divested Health Minister B Sriramulu of all Covid-related responsibilities and handed them over to Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar. With Sriramulu sulking, the chief minister once again redrew the boundaries and allotted the rest of the state to the former and Bengaluru to Sudhakar. With both often releasing contradictory media statements, Yediyurappa appointed a third minister, S Suresh Kumar as the sole Covid spokesman. Recently, Sudhakar went into home quarantine after some of his family members tested positive and Deputy Chief Minister C N Ashwath Narayan informally stepped into his shoes. But Yediyurappa had other plans and appointed Revenue Minister R Ashoka to oversee Sudhakar’s responsibilities in the interim, triggering heartburn among the DyCM, health minister and medical education minister. Meanwhile, Suresh Kumar withdrew as the spokesman citing his preoccupation with the SSLC exams.

Now, it is once again a free-for-all and in the absence of a strong political leadership, the bureaucracy has become directionless, not knowing from whom to take orders or whose instructions to follow. It is high time Yediyurappa took direct control or appointed a single minister to deal with Covid. Complaints about delay in admission of positive patients are rife and the government should not lose any time in augmenting the bed capacity while at the same time ensuring that there is no lag in contact tracing, both of which are crucial to checking the spread of the virus. A well-oiled machinery is the need of the hour, and the state simply cannot allow matters go astray at this critical juncture.