50 Most Affected Districts With COVID-19 Openly Flout Safety Protocols

India continues to battle the second wave of coronavirus. A total of 1.52 lakh new cases have been reported on Sunday, taking the current tally of coronavirus cases in India to more than 1.33 crore. In the past 24 hours, 839 people died due to coronavirus, taking the COVID-19 death toll to 1,69,275. 

The Union Health Ministry said that 27 lakh Covid-19 vaccine doses were administered till Sunday evening on the first day of 'Tika Utsav', a vaccination drive that is taking place from April 11 to April 14. As of now, a total of 10,43,65,035 people in the country have been vaccinated against the disease. 

The health ministry said that most of the people are not following coronavirus safety protocols. It is said that people of the 50 most affected districts in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Punjab are not at all following the COVID-19 safety protocols. 

According to the reports, the central teams have been sent to Maharashtra and they found that the containment operations are sub-optimal, especially in the Satara, Sangli, and Aurangabad districts. As per findings, the testing capacity in some districts like Satara, Bhandara, Palghar, Amravati, Jalna, etc was also found to be overwhelming.

According to the HT report, a team from Raipur and Jashpur found a lack of perimeter control in containment zones in Chhattisgarh, with no restriction on the movement of people inside these zones.

The expert team stated that "There is no RT-PCR testing laboratory in Rupnagar. This has been addressed urgently. There is no dedicated Covid hospital in SAS Nagar and Rupnagar districts, and patients are being referred to neighbouring districts or Chandigarh. ln Rupnagar, although ventilators are available, these are not being optimally utilised due to shortage of health care workforce, particularly doctors and nurses."

The Centre advised the state governments to make contractual hiring of health care workers as per its additional requirement and asked to create awareness among the people on how it is important to follow COVID-19 safety protocols.