The migrants are coming home to roost

We spoke to a friend, a nurse, who is getting married very soon and she told us a story of what recently happened in Mussourie, the town she lives and works in.
Due to the lockdown restrictions, most cities and states in India are not allowing migrant workers to leave fearing that they will transmit Covid-19 to their resident families at home. The NGO I work for is presently feeding 2500 migrants a large meal every single day. The meals are prepared in an impromptu kitchen and then delivered by Delhi police to migrants stuck in make-shift camps.
Now states and governments have loosened lockdown restrictions for migrants to go home using special buses and trains to reach to their state, but nothing beyond the train or bus station. The greatest fear I have is that these migrants, none of whom have been tested, will now bring the Corona virus to their unprotected families and villages in states that have little to no medical facilities to take care of the victims and the second wave is going to be awful to witness.
To return to my incident recitation, buses arrived in Mussourie with migrants returning from Delhi. They were stopped before proceeding inland and up into the mountain villages and tested.
They had to wait 2 days for the test results to be returned and several tested positive, including some children. They were immediately placed in, what passes for "quarantine" in a hill town. This was just the trickle of what will soon be a torrent in our state. 260,000 migrants have applied for government transport by bus and/or train to return to Uttarakhand immediately and only a handful have made it, so far.
Our current preparedness in Uttarakhand:
- Testing is non-existent
- There are no facilities for housing that many people, even for the two days needed for test results to return.
- What to do with the positive cases?
- There are no quarantine facilities, except for the main government hospital in Dehradun, which is already overwhelmed.
- Private hospitals refuse to take in any Covid-19 patients since the costs of their care will probably not be paid by the state.
- Ignorance of the causes, spread and precautions of Covid 19 is prevalent in the mountains so many will die.
- The state has no emergeny plans in place to handle this influx, our CM believes cows exhale oxygen and if you live with them, they will cure TB, so a sophisticated response will not be led from the top. (Uttarakhand has the highest incidence of TB in India)
Welcome to Phase II of this pernicious pandemic, not to be pessimistic, but what is coming is going to be far worse than what has already occurred.
Be Smart, Be Safe, Be Prepared

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