Unknown epidemiological links and a health dept practically out of commission as cases keep soaring

New Delhi: Running helter-skelter trying to contain the COVID-19 epidemic without a Cabinet, a health minister or senior bureaucrats, the Shivraj Singh Chauhan government in Madhya Pradesh seems to be running blind when it comes to controlling the spread of the novel Coronavirus in the case. In fact, the health bulletins from the state government are also unable to identify epidemiological links of the spread of the infection, now that the top echelons of the new government have either tested positive for COVID-19 or have been put under quarantine.

While the rest of the country was busy trying to put in place measures to contain the spread of the infectious disease, Madhya Pradesh was engrossed in high political drama as the Bharatiya Janata Party spent practically, the first half of March to topple the Kamal Nath government. As Chauhan took oath as the Chief Minister again on March 23, the country was preparing to go into lockdown from the next day.

The newly formed government –with 22 rebel Congress MLAs waiting for their ministerial berths –was now thrown into a massive public health crisis, the scale of which was underestimated and dismissed by most top officials of the government who were supposed to deal with the crisis in the first place.

Unknown epidemiological links

Currently, MP has become one of the states to have many mysterious COVID-19 infections with no known epidemiological links and three of the most important hubs of the state –Indore, Bhopal and Ujjain –have been completely sealed for containment. As of April 10, the state had 451 COVID-19 cases, 366 of which are in just the abovementioned three cities (Indore - 235; Bhopal - 116; Ujjain - 15). A total of 36 people had died, as per the authorities.

In fact, Madhya Pradesh has among the lowest testing capacities, with their latest bulletin stating that they had tested around 7,000 samples as of April 10 and had a stockpile of 6,000 testing kits as on that date, while adding that they were looking at ways to procure more.

In addition, SARI (Severe Acute Respiratory Illness) surveillance in Madhya Pradesh shows that it has a COVID-19 prevalence of 2 per cent among tested patients, which is among some of the highest in the country. SARI surveillance tests patients hospitalised with SARI for COVID-19 to check for community transmission.

While the government has taken a stern approach toward Tablighi Jamaat members who had attended the Nizamuddin Markaz event, only around 13 percent cases are linked to that cluster, whereas at least 32 officials just within the state health department have reportedly tested positive –putting hundreds in the government in quarantine –with unclear sources of infection.

Moreover, another hotspot for COVID-19 in the state has become the temple city of Ujjain, where the Mahakaleshwar temple was kept open for devotees at least until March 16. Ujjain has so far reported 15 cases.

Running blind

So how is it that COVID-19 contamination suddenly picked up in the state and why is the administration running blind?

Firstly, with no health minister to spearhead the fight against COVID-19, MP's efforts to contain the spread fell squarely on the CM and his officials along with a bunch of senior bureaucrats in the health department. However, by the first week of April, Pallavi Jain Govil, principal secretary of the health department, J. Vijaya Kumar, director of health services, Veena Sinha, additional director in the health department, and deputy director Virendra Kumar Chaudhary, had all tested positive for COVID-19.

Interestingly, all these officials had attended several government meetings with the Chief Minister and the Chief Secretary despite showing symptoms.

A lot of these officials had relatives who had returned from COVID-19 affected countries and had not informed authorities of the possible risk for contamination. Now, Health Commissioner Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, Additional Chief Secretary Anurag Jain and many other officials have had to self-quarantine.

As a consequence, Bhopal's posh Char Imli locality, where most senior bureaucrats and government officials live has been sealed for containment and so have areas such as Shyamala Hills (where CM and former CMs live) and Malviya Nagar (where Raj Bhawan is located) –effectively putting the state administration under quarantine.

Indore's burial numbers

Another curious case that has emerged out of Madhya Pradesh's handling of the COVID-19 crisis is that while the administration claims a death toll of 26 in Indore, an unusual number of deaths have been reported across four Muslim burial grounds in the city during the first week of April.

According to records of these four cemeteries in Indore, around 145 burials have taken place across these burial grounds in a span of seven days. What is unusual is that for the entire month of March, these four burial grounds had collectively conducted only 130 burials.