PATNA: It has been six months since the state reported the first three
Covid-19 cases
on March 22. Now, the tally has gone up over 1.60 lakh with nearly 900 Covid deaths in the state.
Since March, the state government has faced several challenges in tackling the pandemic, including the need to develop
health infrastructure
and increase testing capacity, apart from tracing the contacts to curb the virus spread. Health experts say counselling patients and attendants and preparing standard operating procedures were also challenging for them.
Initially, all the
Covid-19
cases reported in Bihar had a history of foreign return. All the three people who had tested positive on March 22 had come back from abroad. In April, most of the people who tested positive had either returned from abroad or were close contacts of such people.
Even the virus had not reached across the state by then. As per the data available with TOI, there were 425 Covid-19 cases registered from 29 districts of Bihar till April 20. As per the health department’s data on classification of districts, Gaya, Munger, Rohtas, Buxar and Patna were put in the red zone category in the first week of May, while 13 districts were in the green zone.
In fact, none of the migrant intensive districts like Madhubani, Darbhanga, Saharsa, Madhepura, Supaul, Purnea, Katihar and Kishanganj were in the red zone then. And districts like Muzaffarpur and Katihar, which were in green zone category, are now among the top ten districts with maximum cases registered so far.
However, with the influx of migrants and their random testing from May 8 onwards, the state witnessed an increase in Covid-19 cases, as well as a shift to rural parts. Apart from Patna, Araria, Supaul, Saharsa, Madhubani and Bhagalpur have maximum active cases now. None of these districts were initially kept in the red zone, barring Patna.
As far as the month-wise data is concerned, August had the maximum over 85000 people testing positive for Covid-19 in Bihar. The number of cases has increased to 1,69,856. However, the silver lining is that over 91% of them recovered from the virus infection.
Recalling the past six months, AIIMS-Patna nodal incharge for Covid-19, Dr Sanjiv Kumar, said, “It was quite a challenging task. Initially, patients and their attendants were not aware as to what to do and where to go. Also, since we had converted into a dedicated Covid-19 hospital, all the specialists and superspecialists had to leave their field and work for Covid-19 and needed to be convinced. Making SOP was also difficult as we had to take care of the safety of all the health workers.”
Former state IMA president and at present principal of Madhubani Medical College, Dr Rajiv Prasad Ranjan, said initially several people instead of opting for scientific treatment were going by their superstitious belief. “But now people are abiding by what is being told by health experts. We had reached an alarming situation in August, but managed well and succeeded in keeping the mortality rate low. Now doctors have also understood that clinical sense is the only strength,” said Dr Rajiv, adding, “Migrants were the victims of virus spread in bigger cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, but we gave them a healing touch.”