If there is one state in India, evidently, that is not very comfortable with the idea of a complete lockdown, then it is Andhra Pradesh.
On Saturday, Chief Minister of AP, YS Jaganmohan Reddy briefed the Prime Minister Narendra Modi through a video conference on the measures being taken by the state government to contain and prevent COVID19 pandemic.
While a majority of the chief ministers of the rest of the states almost voted in favour of the extension of complete lockdown, the AP CM suggested the PM to limit lockdown only to red zones. In his eight minute address, the CM spoke more about the economic impact on the state and financial hardships being faced by the people. He reminded that the Spanish flu pandemic, which struck in 1918, was prevalent for close to two years and hinted that it would not be wise to continue the present status. However, he ended the speech in a diplomatic way assuring the PM that the state will work as one unit with the centre and any decision taken by the PM is acceptable.
This is not the first time that the CM expressed in some way that he is not very convinced with the idea of a complete lockdown. Even as few states, including neighbouring Telangana and far-away Punjab, rushed in to announce the extension of lockdown after the video conference with the PM, AP adopted a wait-and-watch approach till the last day, April 14.
The AP CM also has a slightly different approach to COVID19 lockdown when compared to his counterparts while communicating with people. If Telangana CM held 6 press meets during the first phase of lockdown to sternly warn people to follow lockdown, CM Jagan held almost half, limiting himself to mostly making appeals to people. The state government headed by the 47 year old seems to be more keen on an aggressive long-drawn strategy for COVID19 accepting the fact that the virus is here to stay for sometime.
The high-level review meetings and the ground-level exercises clearly point in this direction. The first ever press meet where the CM spoke about COVID19 was on March 15. “This virus can be around for one year. Life cannot come to a halt and we have to move forward,” he remarked unfazed. Though he was speaking in the context of postponing of local elections by state election commissioner, it was give-away that the founder of YSRC party did not believe in knee-jerk reactions.
His confidence and strength also seem to be the result of various systems put in place much before the virus even landed in the state, most crucial one being the door-to-door survey. On March 8, days before the first COVID19 case was detected, the state undertook its biggest and quickest survey. More than 3 lakh members deployed by the government set out in the early hours to knock on every door looking for COVID suspects. In 48 hours, 10.3 million households were covered, their data collected and foreign returnees identified in this massive exercise.
The focus of the survey was on gathering information about people who returned from abroad, mainly from affected countries like China, Iran and Italy, and suggesting self-isolation to vulnerable group for a few days. The foot soldiers involved in this operation were ASHA (Accredited Social health Activist) workers and ANMs (Auxiliary Nurse Midwives) but the game-changers were the 2.2 lakh village volunteers. As part of election manifesto promise that would help in a decentralised rule, YS Jagan led government recruited a youngster for every 50 households in the state for a salary of Rs 5000 per month. Their main task is to ensure that government programmes and schemes are implemented in rural and urban areas. However, in this season, they are at the forefront of the fight against COVID19.
The Village volunteers who work under ASHA and ANM’s have been helping with mapping data and also keeping an eye on the candidates under home isolation.
What spurned the second round of door-to-door survey was a positive case reported in Vizag, the proposed executive capital of the state. This time, not a foreign-returnee but a Delhi returnee was found to be positive.
“I reached home at 12.30 in the night from work,” recalled Srinivas Rajamani, City Project Coordinator working along with Greater Vizag Municipal Corporation on a United Nations Development Project. He recalled on what happened on March 19 while they were in a state of high alert and preparedness. “ I got a call that a patient was found to be COVID19 positive and we learned that he entered the city by train. Immediately I left for a meeting with civic officials. Till 4.30 am, I was holed up in a meeting with district and state level health officers and civic officials and we drew up a plan. The containment strategy was applied immediately.” A day or two later, once again, the army of volunteers were alerted and a second cycle of door-to-door survey was set in motion. It began in March 22 and was completed in two days.
“This time, we enquired about people who travelled from outside the city. The focus was less on those who came from abroad and more on the people who had domestic travel history. We recorded all the names and also screened their health condition. We compiled the data and sent it to our higher officials. we did a follow-up almost everyday on those we thought had some history or were unwell, sometimes even twice a day,” said K. Anjali, an ANM from Kurnool district.
The biggest challenge for the administration, like most other states was tracking all those who attended the Jamaat meetings in New Delhi and also the contact tracing. Along with the police department, the volunteers played a key role in tracing those who attended the Delhi event.
“I remembered that in one of the households, a male person was a lorry driver. I went back and enquired and I got to know he travelled to Maharshtra. While we were convincing him to get screened and tested, he told us about someone who had arrived from Delhi. We reached out to him and their contacts and all of them were kept under quarantine. Later, one of them tested positive,” said an ANM from Guntur district who did not wish to be quoted.
The job of the volunteers is hectic as it begins at 6 am. They routinely check for health conditions for people and also keep a tab on all those under home quarantine.
To prevent any spike and also arrest the infection to containment zones, the chief minister ordered yet another round of door-to-door survey. In the third cycle, the volunteers were told to make a detailed enquiry about the health condition of every individual, especially those the vulnerable group with underlying health condition or age-related issues. The volunteers found that around 32,000 people were unwell. The Chief Minister immediately ordered COVID19 tests for all of them. The state is also gearing up to randomly test 45,000 people, mainly those from containment zones. The state seems to be more inclined towards aggressive testing and that too on a mass-scale. The government had already placed an order for more than 2 lakh rapid testing kits and apart from that, 5000 kits are being manufactured daily from a a medical technology zone in Vizag with support of the state government. The health department has already placed an order of 1 lakh kits. Apart from that, mobile sample collections centres and testing labs are also being setup in various parts of the state.
Additional Chief Secretary to CM of Andhra Pradesh, Dr. PV Ramesh informed that in the coming days they will be looking at training lot more people on using COVID19 test kits. “The focus will be on strategic and targeted testing. We will test in containment zones and all those who have symptoms. The COVID19 phenomenon has largely seen in urban and semi-urban than rural. So, we are focusing on those areas. Testing is very important. Unless, we test we cannot lift the lockdown completely.”
In a latest move, the CM has ordered that 16 crores masks be distributed free of cost to the 5.5 crore people of the state. And the volunteers are gearing up for the next assignment of handing over 3 masks to every individual.
