Telangana: Surge in Covid cases keeps people indoors

Hyderabad: Even though the State government put on hold the proposal to impose another round of lockdown to check the surge of COVID-19 cases, a virtual lockdown is in force in urban Telangana unofficially.

Daily life has come to a grinding halt in more than 50 per cent of 139 Urban Local Bodies. Traders continue to shut their shops by 2 pm voluntarily and the people too prefer to stay indoors. Unless there is some emergency, denizens are not venturing out of their homes.

Local private transportation mainly autos have completely shut the operations and the just resumed RTC inter-district bus services do not have many takers in most of the urban local bodies as people have stopped moving from one place to another. In the last one week, the number of corona cases have increased abnormally in districts like Nalgonda, Suryapet, Sangareddy, Mahbubnagar, Medchal and Khammam districts.

Most of the positive cases have been reported in the municipalities in the districts which are under the government surveillance . Somehow, the urban local authorities initiated measures to contain the spread of the virus by restricting people's movement. As a pre-emptive measure, a majority of the local markets were closed and the traders have been asked to open the shops between 10 am and 2 pm only.

In Khammam district, Municipal authorities imposed restrictions on people's movements in Wyra urban body and in Kodada in Suryapet district. The authorities were delivering essential commodities at their doorsteps after four positive cases of virus reported on a single day in these municipal areas.

Municipalities in Mahbubnagar and Sangareddy were also under siege after more number of positive cases were reported. Warangal, Nizamabad, Ramagundam and Khammam Municipal Corporations were also facing the threat of spurt in the virus cases. Strict vigil is on in the corporations.

At many places, doctors who have been running clinics for decades and are above 60 years have closed the clinics and young medical practitioners prefer to provide medical treatment through video conference. The only option left before the people is to knock on the government dispensaries for medical aid. But many government hospitals are poorly equipped and also facing shortage of medical staff and are not able to meet the demand.

Revenue, Municipal, Police and Health and Medical departments are struggling hard to keep the urban bodies free from the corona pandemic. Controlling people from visiting the markets is a major task before them. They feel that it is difficult to contain the spread of virus unless some restrictions were imposed. However, the government is said to be working on the new restrictions which may be announced this week.