Rajasthan has witnessed a sharp surge in the number of coronavirus-positive over the past few days.
A large share of these numbers can be attributed to the migrants returning to their homes from different states. On Tuesday afternoon, the state recorded 250 new positive and one death. Out of these COVID-19 cases, 162 are migrants.
So far, 818 migrants who have come from other states have tested positive to the novel coronavirus.
They are in 29 out of 33 districts of Rajasthan including Bhilwara, where the number of positive cases had gone down to zero, now has 43 migrant positives.
At 201, Dungarpur has the highest number of cases of migrants that have tested positive.
A total of 31 districts of Rajasthan are affected by the COVID19 pandemic and most have seen huge spike in numbers ever since the migrants started to return home. Only Kota and Jaipur have not registered any migrants who tested positive.
If one takes a look at the numbers the number of positive migrants has been steadily on the rise. With more and more migrants returning to villages, daily numbers of migrant positives too has also been rising.
The government too is concerned about the sharp rise in cases since the migrants returned to their villages. Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot said in no uncertain terms that checking spread of infection in villages is the top priority of the government.
Pilot said “Till now the infection has been limited to the cities. Under no circumstances can we permit it to spread to rural areas. We will spare no effort to stop it in the red zones. We have developed a public protocol for state, district, block and panchayat level and every officers and public representatives are working to ensure that the infection does not spread in the villages.” “Our recovery rate is good in urban areas, but health infrastructure is not so strong in villages. If it spreads in villages it will be very difficult to control. This is out top priority to ensure that the infection does not spread in villages,” he added.
The tabulated listing of categorization of zones released by the government along with the directions for Lockdown 4 on Monday shows a dominating sprinkling of Red Zone in the rural areas.
This along with the spike in numbers has become a cause of concern to the people at large. However, but the medical and health department has cautioned people to not get perturbed by the numbers. “With increase in positive cases, mostly due to returnees from other states, good news is that the case fatality rate is down, one of the lowest in the country and below the national average. So, there is no need to panic,” said ACS Medical and Health Rohit Kumar Singh in a tweet on Tuesday.
Migrants had started to return home since last week. Out of the infected districts only Kota and Jaipur have not registered any positive migrants. Experts believe this is because both cities have ample employment opportunities and are majorly home to migrants from other states. Rajasthan has huge migrant populations in the seriously affected states of Maharashtra and Gujarat and those returning to homes are largely from states.
