Covid Care Diary: Moving into the Containment Zones

MSJ Bangalore: 15th May 2020

If someone is lucky then some others should be unlucky. 

Even though the lockdown started on the 24th of March 2020 everyone thought that 21 days of quarantine lockdown will heal all of us. In fact, it would heal the whole of India from Covid pandemic. Unfortunately things have been otherwise. As the Covid lockdown continued the cases reporting Covid infection increased day by day. After the second lockdown imposition things have not been very different. We have have been noticing an increase in number of people being affected by the Corona infection. Even though now this lockdown is lifted phase by phase contaminated cases haven't been contained. Meanwhile, all of us are learning to live with the fears of contamination of Corona infection.

Nevertheless, our initial Covid care kits reached those migrant workers and daily wage earners in our vicinity. Surprisingly, in the last few weeks our outreach has reached a radius of 20-30 kilo meters from our Mount Saint Joseph campus. Indeed, it is great feat! Even we ourselves cannot believe that such a massive work could be done if people of good will could come forward and sacrifice their comforts and even their lives. Along with doctors, nurses, hospital administration, police, and others who are called as frontline warriors by the government, we too should be called as  frontline warriors. We too risk our lives and wellbeing. All the more, we have stopped people getting into the streets in order to get food and other things  for their survival. Instead of they coming to us we have gone to them. Moreover, we have helped the administration of the country to help people to maintain a healthy life, which we did, not only by giving groceries to them but also educating them on how to keep themselves sane and healthy.

Fascinatingly during this difficult but challenging time we have been able to reach out those who have to maintain strict rules of not venturing out of their houses or apartments. This is because their localities are categorised under containment zones or areas. What are those containment zones? The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India defines the containment zone as a specific geographical area where positive cases of coronavirus are found. Strict movement restrictions are put in place in such areas to prevent further spread of the virus. The zones are conceived to map the local transmission of the disease and prevent the contagion from spreading. This means that aforementioned locality is put under strict lockdown for 21 to 28 days. These localities are different from hotspots where six or more people have tested positive for coronavirus are identified in that area.
Once the government announces the particular locality is under quarantine quickly that location gets sealed. People are unable to move out from that locality. Grocery or vegetable shops are closed for almost 21 to 28 days. It’s a maroon state of life. So far we have provided to such areas  our Covid care kits in order to help people in distress and dire need. The areas that we have covered so far are Bapuji Nagar, Malleshwaram, Padarayanapura, Begur, Shivajinagar, Hongasandra, and Rajajinagar in Banglaore.

When we provide relief kits in these containment areas we keep in mind a number of things. Our relief care kits should be larger in size because people cannot come out of their area for a longer period, i.e., 21 to 28 days. This means accessibility to outsiders is very minimum. Outsiders cannot enter the zone, even we are not allowed. Therefore they are provided with a larger quantity of vegetables and grocery items.

Unfortunately, even though we do whatever is possible from our side to help these people in containment zones, we have a great satisfaction that people will benefit from our service of widow's mite. We may not get any calls or any other communication from them but they must be thinking that this help must be coming from some quarters, perhaps from private agencies. We are glad that we could be of some help to them in this time of agony of waiting to get the skies to get cleared. 

- Reported by Olvin Veigas, SJ

15 May 2020