By Anurjay Dhal
RAJKANIKA/KENDRAPARA(ODISHA): The World Economic Forum in an article titled “Why India has the upper hand against COVID-19,” has hailed Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for Odisha’s early preparedness to fight back the outbreak of COVID-19 in this eastern Indian State. “Odisha’s susceptibility to natural disaster gave it an advantage in crisis preparedness,” the WEF said in its Article written by Media Consultant Taruka Srivastav.
About Odisha, the WEF wrote that this eastern state of India suffers nearly 25% of India’s natural disasters, which means that crisis precautions were already in place. These included cyclone shelters, now being used to house migrant workers from other states during the coronavirus outbreak.
“Proactive preparedness is Odisha’s hallmark, with it becoming the first Indian state to impose full lockdown (before India imposed it as a whole), and now the first to extend it until 30 April. The state classified COVID-19 as a natural disaster, like the super-cyclone of 1999. It was the first to announce exclusive COVID-19 hospitals and delivered them within a week in two districts; now every district will have one. The state is further giving free medical treatment to all COVID-19 patients,” the article said.
Quoting State Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy, the Article said: “We were lucky to have the experience of countries like Italy before us. We saw the unintended catastrophe that happened in countries where they treated COVID patients in regular hospitals along with other patients. Therefore, our government moved very early to establish exclusive Odisha COVID hospitals across the state. We made a plan by inviting and involving private hospital operators and also corporates.”
The State’s containment programme was rooted in strategic use of IT. It identified the highest-risk category people coming from abroad in order to put them in home quarantine to stop the spread. Leading the country, Odisha devised an incentive program by offering INR15,000 for all foreign returning people to declare themselves on a government portal developed within 11 hours. According to the state’s IT Secretary, Manoj Mishra, over 5,000 international returnees and also about 35,000 domestic returnees from COVID-19-affected states registered and were asked to home quarantine.
The government put the five most reported districts on lockdown first on 22 March. This also helped the state to have a control over the quarantine mechanism and so far according to the state’s Health and Welfare Department, Odisha has recorded 61 cases (out of which 24 have recovered and 1 died as on April 19).
Odisha, too, has created thousands of temporary shelters for migrant workers and is providing cooked meals and counselling to all those in need. According to Subroto Bagchi, regional government spokesperson, 1,882 temporary camps have been set up to provide food and shelter to 56,926 guest workers from different states stranded due to the 21-day nationwide lockdown.
Meanwhile, the state’s Mission Shakti Self Help Groups (SHGs) are making masks in bulk to avoid any shortage (wearing them outside is now mandatory). According to Sujata Karthikeyan, Director of Mission Shakti, around 605 SHGs have made 1.5 million cotton masks so far, helping protect the community and medics. More than 7,000 SHGs are working day and night to produce protection gear for those on the frontlines and also running village panchayat-level kitchen centres to cook meals for those in need: so far over 325,000 people.
More than 700SHGs of Mission Shakti have registered their overwhelming presence in running 707dry ration &vegetable shops including 130mobile Vans to break the supply side glitches cropped up due to the lockdown and to ensuredelivery of essentials at the door step of the people, the Article added.
