Figures of last one month make shocking revelations
CS cautions Health Deptt, DCs against being complacent
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Oct 10: Shattering the general myth that Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases have gone down in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, the Chief Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam has pinpointed that this illusion is only due to sharp decline in the sampling and testing during the past one month. Accordingly, he has issued slew of directives to all the concerned authorities so that prevailing situation is prevented from slipping out of the hands.
The observation of the Chief Secretary based on the cogent reasons is a big question mark on the performance of the Health and Medical Education Department as well as most of the Deputy Commissioners of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that ever since the deadly virus has taken the entire Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir in its tight grip, Chief Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam is repeatedly laying stress on increasing sampling and testing so that no positive case gets unnoticed.
While interacting with the Deputy Commissioners and field functionaries of the Health Department on August 17, 2020, the Chief Secretary had explicitly directed for ramping up the sampling so that COVID-19 cases are tested immediately.
“We have already enhanced our testing capacity and are able to get the testing of good number of samples done both inside and outside Jammu and Kashmir. However, to match the gap of testing and sampling we need to push our field functionaries to prioritize the sample collection exercise”, Subrahmanyam had stated in the meeting, adding “delay in sample collection may pose threat due to non-detection of COVID-19 positive cases”.
However, startling revelations have come to the fore during the analysis of data of sampling of last one month of all the districts of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The analysis has been made by none else than the Chief Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam.
As per the data, the copy of which has been managed by EXCELSIOR, a total of 10419 samples for COVID-19 testing were taken in all the 10 districts of Jammu division on September 8, 2020 and this number increased to 13135 on September 13, 2020. However, thereafter the number started declining and on October 8, 2020, a total of 8492 samples were taken across the Jammu division.
As far as Kashmir division is concerned, a total of 8335 samples were taken on September 8, 2020 and the number increased to 15367 on September 16, 2020. However, on October 8, 2020, only 10256 samples were taken thereby indicating considerably decline.
The district-wise break-up of sampling, which is also available with EXCELSIOR, reveals more shocking and laid-back approach of the concerned authorities especially during the past one month.
On the basis of this data, the Chief Secretary has sent a strong worded message to all the Deputy Commissioners and those at the helm of affairs in the Health and Medical Education Department and cautioned them against being complacent.
“The daily sampling has fallen after hitting a peak of 28,000 one day to 18000…..this is not acceptable”, the Chief Secretary said, adding “the only way to control the disease is to test to the maximum extent possible”.
Asking Health Department and all the Deputy Commissioners to push testing/sampling to the maximum possible limit, Subrahmanyam further said, “showing low COVID-19 positive cases is no great achievement because it will go up again if uncontrolled”.
The observations of the Chief Secretary based on the official data has shattered the general myth that Novel Coronavirus cases have gone down in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and situation will be much better in the coming days.
“Actually there is less number of COVID-19 positive cases because of sudden decline in the sampling in almost all the districts of the Union Territory and this has generated wrong notion among the people about improvement in the situation”, official sources said.
They, however, said, “the situation is not worth to be complacent neither for the administration nor for the people and both have to play their respective role in ensuring that situation doesn’t slip out of the hands in the coming days”.
“These figures clearly reveal that instead of ramping up sampling and testing the same has declined considerably in a short span of time”, they further said, adding “it seems that not only people even the administration has started taking the deadly COVID-19 casually and this approach is fraught with the danger of enormous spike in the cases in near future”.
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