Third wave: State on record breaking spree
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: January 20, 2022 -

CONSIDERING the consistent spike in the number of Covid-19 positive cases in the past few days in comparison to the near constant testing rate, it seems that the state will be in no position to check further escalation of the infections other than waiting for the contagion to wane on its own like in the first two waves.

In such a scenario, it wouldn't be gross to contend that the government authorities are merely focussing on keeping count of the daily and cumulative number of cases instead of putting in place effective mechanism to break the chain of transmission.

In sharp contrast to guidelines issued by the Union government that track, test, treat and vaccination be given the top priority to contain the pandemic, the health department officials appear to have either run out of idea on how to lead the fight or simply hoping for divine intervention.

Ever since the daily positive cases crossed the 100 mark on January 11, the state is witnessing an increase of over 100 cases within a span of two days while the test positivity rate too has been rising sharply.

However, the number of samples tested has been swaying between 1700 and 2500 in the said period with the 2724 samples tested on Tuesday being the highest number of tests conducted.

Among others, the sluggish testing exercise underscores that the pace of containment exercises, primarily based on early detection of the vectors to prevent further transmission of the infectious disease, needs to be expedited for the state to keeping the situation under control.

In case of failure to effectively implement the preventive protocols formulated by the government, then it could be safely predicted that Manipur would be one of the states to see sharpest rise in positive cases in the coming days or weeks.

Regardless of experts projecting that most of India will see a peak in Omicron cases by mid-February, there shouldn't be any surprise if the state continuous to struggle to tackle the pandemic as had been experienced when Manipur and Kerala recorded high test positivity rate in September-October; before Mizoram came into the picture, when the daily cases in most of the states dipped and normalcy returned.

Accepted that Mizoram had been remaining in the vice-like grip of the contagion for possibly the longest period but the neighbouring state's sample testing record has been commendable in the earlier waves as well as in the current situation.

For instance, Mizoram officially logged 1280 cases on Tuesday with positivity rate of 17 per cent whereas here in the state the positivity rate was 13.95 per cent while the daily cases in the same period was nearly four times lesser than Mizoram's.

Though the number of daily infections suggests non-adherence to Covid appropriate behaviour in Mizoram, it is mainly due to the greater number of samples tested that the test positivity rate is congruous to the daily cases.

Thus, it is recommended that the health department launches aggressive testing extensively to prevent the state from experiencing explosion in cases even before the predicted nationwide peaking of the infection by Omicron vaziant.