Srinagar, July 18: While terming the rising COVID-19 positive cases and deaths due to the deadly virus in Kashmir as worrisome, Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) Vice President and former MLC G N Monga today said that J&K government has run out of options and has failed to tackle the pandemic.
“What is the government’s plan to go forward as the coronavirus is growing exponentially in Kashmir. The lockdown which was imposed in March to contain the spread of the virus failed completely. The process of unlocking was initiated at a time when there was a sharp rise in the number of COVID-19 cases. The overall policies to tackle the pandemic and their implementation only underline the mess created by the government,” he said in a statement to news agency KINS.
The Congress leader said the government utterly failed to utilize the lockdown period to expand the infrastructure of the public health system, ensuring adequate medical equipment, PPEs and other supplies.
“The government should have strengthened the public health system on a war-footing basis during the lockdown period, but unfortunately its priorities lied somewhere else. All these point to the all-round failure of the government in tackling the pandemic. It looks as if the government has run out of options and is reconciled to the pandemic running its course,” he rued.
Monga said there is an urgent need for massive testing, tracing and isolating cases on a large-scale in a systematic way. “The government must rely on health experts and epidemiologists to formulate policies with regard to testing, contact tracing and isolation of people affected by the virus. So-far the policies to tackle COVID-19 are being formulated by the bureaucrats which has proved a disaster,” he said.
The Congress leader said the COVID-19 pandemic is still in its early stages and until an effective vaccine is developed it will be a long and hard battle. “The government should increase beds with high-flow oxygen in hospitals at the earliest. The government must also purchase more ventilators to augment the capacity of hospitals and then you need to have more doctors to utilise those ventilators. There is also an urgent need for staff that can run ICUs and high-dependency units,” he said.
