Hindi heartland states gear up for spike in cases

New Delhi: The Hindi heartland is gearing up for a spike in Covid-19 cases as a large number of migrant labourers return home. This comes even as PM Modi cautioned chief ministers this week to stop the spread of the infection to rural India. The four big states –– MP , Rajasthan, UP and Bihar –– have recorded high recovery rates but widely varied record when it comes to fatalities and testing. This is likely to make the situation challenging in the days to come. Bihar has reported nearly 400 fresh cases over the past one week, taking the total to 940. The state has blamed the increase on the return of migrants.

In MP and Rajasthan, the cases have increased by about 900 in each state and by about 700 in UP. ET analysed the health bulletins of the four states and found that the worrying part is the spike in deaths in the three states. Deaths in UP have jumped nearly 40% over the past one week and fatalities in MP continue to grow at a fair clip. While MP and Rajasthan have a similar level of population and roughly the same number of cases, MP’s death figure is more than double that of Rajasthan’s. “MP has the highest fatality rate at 5.5%. Indore is nearing 100 deaths,” a central government official said. The official said all four states, especially MP and Bihar, need to test more. “Rajasthan is conducting the maximum tests — 12,000 daily.

MP’s total tests are almost half of Rajasthan’s. Bihar is testing only about 2,000 people daily but total tests are half of even MP,” the official said. Bihar however said it was doing universal screening of all its residents for influenza-like symptoms. UP has done about 1.45 lakh tests but Agra, Kanpur and Meerut are a big worry. UP said close to 3.3 lakh migrants have returned in special trains. Bihar has received close to two lakh migrants; 2.7 lakh migrants have returned to MP and nearly as many have returned to Rajasthan. Another 20 lakh more are likely to return to these states over the next one week.