North Goa, which welcomed tourist revellers during the festive season flouting all Covid protocols, now has a weekly positivity rate higher than districts in Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, etc.
Only one district each in Nagaland, Himachal and Tamil Nadu, four in Arunachal Pradesh as well as Haryana’s Faridabad and Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram, have higher weekly positivity rates than Goa.
For months after the second wave — save for a few occasions in September, October and November — both Goa’s districts reported positivity rates below 2%. North Goa first breached the 5% positivity mark in the week December 24 to 30 followed by South Goa soon after and within four days North Goa’s weekly positivity rate crossed the 10% weekly positivity mark in the week December 28 to January 3.
A week later North Goa’s weekly positivity rate soared to over 40%.
Goa has quickly moved from the Centre’s list of districts with weekly positivity rates below five per cent, to the list of five percent to 10%% list, to now the above 10% one.
The small state’s North district has been recording a weekly positivity rate of over 40% since the week January 10 to 16.
After the devastating second wave the state’s expert committee on Covid in August had recommended that a graded approach to tourism be followed as per the curfew plan approved by the state task force headed by the chief minister in August 2020. As per the plan, restrictions would be imposed using the state’s positivity rate as an indicator.
This curfew plan, which included shutting all tourism activities in case of positivity rate above 10%, wasn’t followed and after this was pointed out to the high court recently, the committees changed their curfew plan deciding to impose restrictions based on bed occupancy and oxygenated beds in Covid hospitals instead of the positivity rate.
The expert committee at its meeting on January 8 stated that the members, following “a lot of deliberation”, felt that “there is a paradigm shift in the third wave when compared to the second and hence positivity rate would not be proper indicator or main element of the framework to be used to facilitate decision making in enforcing restrictions and containment measures”.
The committee suggested that 10% bed occupancy and 40% on oxygen-supported beds for Goa Medical Colleges’s super specialty block, and 50% on oxygen-supported beds for North Goa district hospital and South Goa district hospital be used as indicators to frame the new curfew plan.
According to the old curfew plan approved in August 2021, in the case of a positivity rate of more than five percent and active cases of 2,500 and above, testing be enforced at borders and all functions be restricted to 50 in a closed hall and 100 in open space.
In the event of a positivity rate of more than 10% and active cases more than 5,000, all tourism activities be shut, and for a positivity rate of more than 20% and active cases of more than 10,000, maximum restrictions be imposed on entry inside the state and total curfew with only essential services to be permitted.
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