The battle is not over: Are we putting our children at risk?

Amidst alarming news about student contracting with Covid-19 in addition to the detection of two persons with Omicron positive (the latest coronavirus variant) in the state of Karnataka, election campaign of all kinds violating all advisory of the Covid appropriate behaviour are looming in the state. The last couple of weeks showed the report of Covid-19 positive cases to be less than 4%, as per the report from the Manipur State Health Department. Yesterday report from the health department authority said that the positivity rate of covid-19 cases was 2.24%. The report is impressive, but when one analyzes the number of persons tested and the number of people found infected with the Covid-19 cases per day during the last couple of weeks, there is no reason for the people who understand Covid-19 to stop worrying about the deadly pandemic that freezes all wakes of life for over one year.
For reasons best known to the State Health department authority, the number of tests conducted per day has never reached even 2000, during the last few weeks. Yesterday’s figures tested was 1,476 persons and the number tested positive was 33. During the first wave of the pandemic, what the nation’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the people were – “test, test, and test”. This was followed by mass vaccination to protect from the novel coronavirus. The same was echoed by the Chief Minister of Manipur, who is also in charge of the health department. But why the testing has been decreased day after another besides delaying the vaccination programme in reaching out to the maximum number of people.
Well and good the schools have started functioning? But how safe are our students who are studying till class 12 as there is yet to produce vaccine for children below 18 years? School authorities might have taken up extreme measures to make sure that students follow the Covid appropriate behavior inside the class room. What about after the classes? If one waited and see at the entry of any schools opened today it will definitely shock those who are aware of the dreaded virus on seeing the way that those students have been exposed. Besides, there is no guarantee about those students who came in jam-pack local taxi (auto) to reach their schools.
People of the state particularly, the students’ bodies, teachers’ body and all stakeholders including the guardians seem to have completely forgotten or are not aware about the minimum school complex requirement as per the government guidelines. There are schools which do not even have playground in the states and nobody is bothered. The School Directorate Authority seems to have forgotten the minimum criteria of opening a school.
The people are still not safe from the dreaded novel coronavirus and new mutated variants detected at Karnataka may not take long to reach here in the state. Simply ignoring reality just because somebody may lose the opportunity to conduct election campaign may bring catastrophe in the society.