One of Kerala’s most respected doctors, who is involved with the treatment of COVID-19 patients as well as research into the spread of coronavirus, has said Kerala is doing everything right in handling the present situation except for contact tracing.
Dr. Rajeev Jayadevan, who is a member of the National IMA Task Force on Coronavirus and also Deputy Medical Director of Sunrise Hospitals in Kochi, explained that contact tracing has dropped in Kerala for two reasons: the healthcare workers who should be doing it have been diverted to vaccination – and Kerala has one of the highest percentages of both single and double vaccination in the country – whilst fatigue has also set-in after 18 months of COVID-19.
In a 41-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, Dr. Jayadevan agreed with the conclusion reached by Dr. Sujeet Kumar Singh, the Director of the National Centre for Disease Control, who led a special team to Kerala in August, that contact tracing was inadequate and improperly done. He seemed to accept Dr. Singh’s figures that the contact tracing ratio is between 1:1.2 to 1:1.7, which means that Kerala is not even tracing one person for every person infected.
However, on every other count, Jayadevan seemed to disagree, sometimes strenuously, with Sujeet Kumar Singh’s conclusions. First, he said it was not true that COVID-19 appropriate behaviour is not enforced in Kerala. Jayadevan said Kerala has amongst the world’s best levels of COVID-19 appropriate behaviour. He also disagreed that the relaxation at Onam and Eid were mistaken. Jayadevan pointed out there were no mass gatherings and people were only permitted to go to each other’s houses.
Second, he said it’s not true that Kerala’s healthcare facilities are under stress. At a state-wide level they are coping with Coronavirus very adequately and satisfactorily. Whilst he agreed there was a time when healthcare facilities in the north were heavily utilised he added they have not reached stages of alarm. His conclusion was that whatever may be the local problems in particular areas, either imminent or emerging, at a state-wide level Kerala can handle the healthcare implications of coronavirus satisfactorily. In addition, Jayadevan also pointed out that Kerala has made tremendous strides in setting-up small local healthcare facilities and he wondered whether Singh was aware of this and had taken this into account.
Also read: Why Is Kerala Reporting So Many More COVID-19 Cases Than Other Indian States?
Even on Singh’s point that Kerala is ineffectively monitoring home isolation, Jayadevan neither agreed nor disagreed. He said it’s conceivable and possible Singh is right but he does not know.
In interview, Jayadevan said the reason why Kerala is seeing so many cases today, whilst they are sharply declining in the rest of the country, is because the proportion of people who have not so far encountered the virus are far greater in Kerala than the rest of the country. The recent sero-survey results show this. Kerala’s sero-positivity is 44% compared to 68% nationwide.
The second reason why Kerala is seeing a high number of cases is its density of population. Jayadevan described Kerala as “one large metropolis”. This means the virus can spread much more quickly and much further compared to other parts of the country.
A third reason is the highly infectious character of the Delta strain which came to Kerala, it seems, later than the rest of the country.
So, for all these reasons, Kerala, in a sense, is catching up with the rest of India.
However, Jayadevan forcefully said that two recent steps taken by Kerala are wrong. The first is the night curfew. The second is the weekend lockdown. He says there is no scientific basis for these steps and they are unnecessary and unwarranted responses to the situation.
He said Kerala should concentrate on improving its contact tracing. He said there are steps being taken to involve the wider community – rather than rely solely on healthcare workers – but he has questions about how successful this could be. Would the community be willing to step-in?
Watch the full interview here.