PANAJI
Goa’s nightmare continued on Tuesday with the second wave of Covid pandemic claiming 31 more lives. The Health Department has recorded a total of 160 deaths and 12,596 new Covid cases over the last eight days and the present Covid death toll of the state has touched 1,086.
Despite this horrific turn of events, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant remained non-committal on adoption of any effective measures to rein in the Covid tsunami that continues to swallow the state.
In direct contradiction to the growing chant in support for border restrictions and a two-week State-wide lockdown, as has been imposed in the neighbouring states, Sawant repeated his decision not to move in for a lockdown.
The Directorate of Health Services on Tuesday recorded 31 more Covid related deaths taking the total Covid death toll of the state to 1,086.
The blood-curdling upward trend of Goa’s Covid graph during the second wave of the pandemic continued with 2,110 new cases being detected from among the 5,548 samples tested in the last 24 hours.
The Health Department has recorded a total of 81,908 confirmed Covid cases so far. Presently, a whopping 16,591 of these cases are active.
The DHS disclosed that 11 deceased were women while 20 were men, all between the age of 42 and 91 years.
Only two of the deceased passed away in less than 10 hours of being admitted at a hospital.
Insisting that the imposition of lockdown badly affects the economic activity and this is evident from the lockdown that was imposed during last year, Sawant said, “We can prevent the spread of coronavirus without imposing lockdown if the police discharge their duties effectively to implement Covid-19 protocol and the people follow the Covid-19 norms.”
In keeping with this belief, Sawant convened a string of meetings with senior officials of various departments including police, home and revenue to focus on strict enforcement of Covid norms.
During the virtual meeting chaired by the CM, which was attended by Director General of Goa Police Mukesh Kumar Meena, DeputyInspector General of Police Paramaditya, Chief Secretary Parimal Rai, all Superintendents of Police, DySPs and all police inspectors, CM instructed Goa Police to ensure strict enforcement of Covid norms during the night curfew and of Section 144 during the day.
“Wedding halls will be fined for failure to ensure implementation of the rules. The number of persons for wedding is also restricted to 50. Police should charge double fine for those violating these restrictions. There should not be more than 50 people for temple fairs and other religious rituals,” CM said while requesting people to offer prayers from the safety of their home instead.
“We have not asked for economic activities to be shut down. Weekly markets should be held at larger spaces to allow social distancing,” he further stated.
The police have now been asked to act without any political pressure while undertaking law enforcement. Commenting on the municipal election victory rallies witnessed across five towns in the state on Monday, Sawant said, “I had asked the police to crackdown on everyone violating the norms. Police should have shut down all the political rallies that were held yesterday after the declaration of municipal poll results.”
While brushing aside the possibility of a lockdown in Goa, CM Sawant assured that the lockdowns and restrictions in Karnataka and Maharashtra will not hinder the transportation of essential goods from these states into Goa. “The transport of these essential goods will continue smoothly,” he said.
CM also held a meeting with revenue officials about Covid management focusing on enforcement of Covid norms.
Virtually addressing the Deputy Collectors and Mamlatdars of all the Talukas on management of surge of Covid situation in the State at his official residence, Altinho, he underscored the urgent need of action by all the stakeholders to control the rate of mortality and the surge of cases in the State.
All deputy collectors, mamlatdars have now been instructed to initiate measures like making awareness at public places, markets, deploy flying squads, police constables at marriage halls, temples, places of entertainments, market, bus stands, fish markets etc. and strictly fine those who violate the rule.
