Keep festive spirit, and the guard up

An amplified coverage of vaccination among most office-goers and government staffers, the full-fledged reopening of workplaces, and the partial reopening of educational institutions such as schools and colleges have contributed to a sense of confidence that things might finally be looking up and we’re past the hump of COVID-19. But more than confidence, it seems complacency has once again found representation in our collective behaviour as a recent citizen survey revealed.

The survey which covered 65,000 people across 366 districts highlighted how masking and social distancing have become the biggest casualties of our quest to celebrate sans caution. Mask compliance ratings have dropped from 29% to 13% while social distancing compliance ratings have plummeted from 11% to 6%, a clear indicator that several Indians now believe that COVID-19 is gone. Or is it? The Centre believes that the second wave is far from over, cautioning citizens that several districts in India are still in the danger zone, so to speak. It urged citizens to be extra vigilant during the last three months of the year.

Two weeks ago, the Health Ministry had reported that 34 districts across nine States and Union Territories (including Puducherry) are witnessing a weekly positivity rate of over 10%. Our neighbouring state of Kerala continues to report 50% of the total COVID cases in India, and has over 1 lakh active cases. The active numbers in four other States range between 10,000-50,000, with Tamil Nadu having over 15,000 active cases. A silver lining for TN is the fact that 70% of its population has antibodies if one goes by the results of the third serosurvey. This is a vast improvement over the numbers highlighted in the second serosurvey, which in April had said only 29% of the State’s population had antibodies.

Having said that, the country reports as many as 14,000 new infections every day. While the nation’s overall weekly positivity rate has come down to 1.68% last week, the government has expressed its concerns over the fact that unnecessary travel, overcrowding and violation of protocols could spearhead the resurgence of infections. And for all practical purposes, the fears are not unfounded. It was recently reported that the easing of travel norms has led to a spike in demand for travel booking, that has exceeded even pre-COVID levels. Tour operators had revealed that Indian travellers have planned their sojourns to the top five international destinations which include UAE, UK, France, Italy and Switzerland during Q3. The Centre has also reopened India to foreign tourists arriving by chartered flights from October 15. The decision was arrived at after representations from state governments and travel operators who had been reeling from the hit to business since last year.

To be fair, the business community has been pummelled by the impact of the lockdowns for more than a year and a half now. And when it comes to the retailers, the months of October, November and December are the months that all the stakeholders count on to make the earnings that will carry them through the year. By any chance, if the Dussehra season ends up creating super-spreaders, it will compel the government to put a blanket ban on large gatherings that could affect both Deepavali and Christmas sales. And we would only have ourselves to blame for this loss of opportunity.