PROBING THE TOLL

With Kashmir having massive morbidity and Jammu leading in the mortality, a puzzled government is trying its best to locate the reasons responsible, reports Masood Hussain

- Masood Hussain

The entry of the Covid19 causing virus into Kashmir was dramatic. It infected a female in Saudi Arabia and many others in her Umrah pilgrims group that took a long flight to Srinagar. She was detected positive on March 16, 2020. She survived. Ten days later, Kashmir reported the first death on March 26, of a religious preacher who had come home after attending a grand religious function. Three days later, a Tangmarg man became the pandemic’s second victim.

Not many people remember, however, that Jammu reported its first case on March 7, 2020, forcing authorities to put almost 400 people in Satwari and Sarwal under surveillance. It was almost a month later when GMC, Jammu announced the death of a 61-year old woman, a resident of Udhampur, who died of Covd19 on April 8.

THE FIRST CASE

Srinagar got into a panic when the first case was reported. The first death actually saw people voluntarily restricted to their homes. However, Jammu’s Covid19 silence was broken by an emotional video in late March showing the dentist wife of a microbiologist crying over her husband’s hospital (read GMC) literally abandoning him and not offering any help in evacuating him, his father, a retired police officer, and his mother for Covid19 test. A section of the media took the Tablighi Jamat route to paint a villain’s image of the doctor ignoring the fact that he was formally part of the Covid19 diagnosis team between March 13 and March 19. As the video got viral, GMC Jammu extended all medical facilities to the Assistant Professor and also corrected the wrong impression that vested interests in the media and GMC had jointly created to suit the narrative in vogue.