With 15 cases now confirmed across the state, Pinarayi Vijayan, the chief minister, ordered a lockdown, shutting schools, banning large gatherings, and advising against visiting places of worship. Equipment shortages left some desperate doctors wearing raincoats and motorcycle helmets instead of coveralls and protective masks. It is also one of the first states to achieve a total fertility rate of 1.7 which it has been maintaining consistently. “The seriousness of the government was amazing,” he says. In addition, there were only 30,000 to 40,000 ventilators nationwide, while testing kits, personal protective equipment for health-care workers, and oxygen flow masks were also in short supply. So he set up a call center in his office, bringing in more than 60 medical students and staff from the district’s health department, whose job was to call everyone isolating, every day. Her patients were stable, she said, but there were only three ventilators at the covid-19 isolation ward and another two for general use, in a hospital with a potential intake of 400 people. edited 3 years ago. If it we’re an independent country, it would have under the ‘developed’ category it looks like!! He gauged, correctly, that this family from Ranni would be intractable. “Let’s see what we can do.”. Kerala has lower per capita income but better human development ranking than Punjab because of many factors. However, stunting increased in Kerala, Goa and Himachal Pradesh, i.e., states typically seen as ‘better performing’. On February 29, a family of three had arrived in the Indian state of Kerala from Italy, where they lived. Health, Education and safety of women are other domains in which the state has made impressive strides. But in Kerala, most people realized the seriousness of the situation. Please click here to subscribe and support our non-profit journalism, How San Francisco plans to trace every coronavirus case and contact, Users, not tech executives, should decide what constitutes free speech online, How an internet lie about the Capitol invasion turned into an instant conspiracy theory. But the carrot was as important as the stick: his office also delivered groceries to those in need. But if you would like to take things a little slower then come here, it’s perfect! To keep numbers down, the district administration would have to continue contact tracing and testing. Everyone around her knew the number to call if they developed symptoms, and they weren’t acting heedlessly by rushing to the hospital at the first sign of a dry cough. It … His actions assuaged the public’s fears and built trust. At the water’s edge, he rolled up his sharp blue trousers and hoisted a jute sack full of provisions over his shoulder. By March 28 it had more than 134,000 people under surveillance, with 620 in government care and the rest isolating at home.Every day, Nooh arrived at his office at 8:30 a.m. and didn’t leave until 9:30 p.m. Lessons learnt from Nipah. What are the ingredients of Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine. He died. I feel like all I did in Kerala is eat and eat, and eat. Even so, Modi—perhaps concerned by the impact on the already lackluster economy—refused to issue public advisories and didn’t address the media. Lessons learnt from Nipah. As the virus spread across villages, towns, and cities and then lit into India’s—and Asia’s—largest slum, Dharavi, in Mumbai, the government continued to ignore calls for more testing and equipment. The capital is Thiruvananthapuram. The State now has the second highest active case pool in the country with 58,884 cases, behind Maharashtra, and accounts for nearly 20% of the nation’s active COVID caseload. It wasn’t even clear how and when it would get food into people’s hands. A government health worker in Kerala checks a boy’s temperature. Each team on his task force was increased from six people to 15. She christened her turquoise blue Nissan Micra the “Covid Car”—nobody else in her family would go near it—and sanitized it every night. After returning from work she would bathe before approaching her children, and refused to kiss them in case she unwittingly transmitted the virus. WHY NO.1 Kerala topped three categories-law and order, health and environment. “Containment is not an option anymore.” The lockdown would slow the spread of the virus, but, he said, there could be 300 million to 500 million cases by July:  “Eventually everyone in India will get covid.”, What was needed now was to proactively test anyone over the age of 65 who was showing symptoms, and for the public sector to start making ventilators “on a war footing.”. It ranks 'second lowest' next only to Kerala in terms of Infant Mortality Rate (20) and birth rate (15.4). They even went to the police for help with paperwork. "Why are Keralites fairer than other South Indians" Because . Even when he was in bed, calls and messages about the situation streamed in. One of the reasons why Kerala is so good in education and health is because the state started from better percentage post independence as compared to the rest of the India. Visiting Sri Lanka: Transport, Must-Do’s & Visa, Shocking Rituals From The Cannibal Indian Aghori Monks, Proof That A Cruise Is Now A Super Affordable Holiday Alternative, Planning is Half the Fun of Travel: Choosing A Hotel, Airbnb Coupon + The Most Important Airbnb Tips, 5 Reasons Wellness Tourism Is the Next Big Trend, Pet-Friendly Road Trip: 5 Things to Keep in Mind When Planning. There are also so many different versions of puttu other than the transitional one, like chicken puttu, beef puttu, fish puttu, prawn puttu, other fruits puttus! They’d given his district officers scraps—an address here, a name there—but Nooh’s task force expanded it dramatically, using GPS data mined from the family’s mobile phones and surveillance footage taken from the airport, streets, and stores. Yet, states which have tested more widely than Bihar have not been able to keep cases as low as the state has (see chart below); in fact, higher testing drives … Sonia Faleiro is the author of Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars (2010). I was welcomed with open arms into Kerala – ‘Gods own country’, with flowers and a personalised sign.  I think I could get used to airport welcomes like this and now everywhere I go I will be expecting roses! 1. Share of central taxes and grants from the centre account for less than 30 per cent of overall revenue receipts for the state. He had asked Indians, in a nationally televised speech, to come out on their balconies one Sunday to clap for health workers. I feel like all I did in Kerala is eat and eat, and eat.  The food in Kerala is more seafood based than the North. One Saturday in March, Nooh took a long drive to Konni, a town on the edge of a forest that is famous for elephants. I backpacked for 6 weeks from Delhi to Mumbai and the constant hassling can get overwhelming if you are not used to this sort of thing.  In Kerala, I have had not one person come up and try to sell me something or shout ‘rickshaw, rickshaw!’, NOT ONE. A few days earlier, the prime minister had proposed an emergency covid-19 fund for the eight member nations of SAARC, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. Life in Kerala reflects its Overall Best Big State crown: it's the safest, healthiest, most environment-friendly and only second-best in education and agriculture. The rest of India wasn’t quite as lucky. While the rest of India, along with countries such as the UK and the US, wouldn’t take stringent steps to limit movement for another two months, Shailaja had ordered Kerala’s four international airports to start screening passengers in January. There was, however, one obstacle. Kerala has got best health care in India ,because people are literate and aware of health .Secondly during British era itself Christian Missioneries established best hospitals through out the state .Nursing Colleges also were established by them .The Kerala Kings gave top priority for education and Health .During Kings rule itself Govt hospitals were established . Geographically, Kerala roughly … The number of people self-isolating quickly rose to more than 1,200. The callers ran patients through a questionnaire meant to assess their physical and mental health, but also to catch lies. There were other reasons why Kerala was better equipped to deal with the crisis than most places. So rather than rely on them, he turned to old-style detective work and technology to piece together where they’d been and who they’d come in contact with. With the shutdown just hours away, people rushed out to buy food and supplies: in many areas they quickly dried up. Now the teams had to track down these people, gauge their symptoms, and either send them to the district hospital for testing or order them to self-isolate at home. There were now more than 162,000 people in self-isolation in his district, as well as more than 60 community kitchens, eight relief camps to house and feed migrant workers unable to return to their home states, and a two-member documentation team taking notes in the event that the situation repeats itself. 🙂 Have a wonderful time! Elsewhere in the country, people were taking WhatsApp rumors at face value—for example, spreading messages claiming that exposure to sunlight could protect against the virus. In 2018, the state had dealt with an outbreak of Nipah, a brain-damaging virus that, like the coronavirus, had originated in bats and transferred to humans. One of the main reasons why people come to Kerala is because of the backwaters in Alappuzha.  I highly recommend doing an overnight stay on a houseboat while you cruise peacefully down the water.  The price to do a houseboat overnight stay includes full dinner and breakfast which I was blown away by.  This should be at the top of your Kerala bucketlist. His biggest concern seemed to be a plan to redesign the heart of the Indian capital, including parliament, at a cost  equal to $2.6 billion. The difference was wider in urban Kerala – monthly per capita consumer expenditure of the top five per cent at Rs 17,356 was 20.1 times that of the bottom five per cent (Rs 862). The trio skipped a voluntary screening for covid-19 at the airport and took a taxi 125 miles (200 kilometers) to their home in the town of Ranni. The country had “missed the boat on testing,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics, and Policy, in a TV interview. There was no bridge, and Nooh had heard that relief supplies hadn’t gotten there. , constituting only about 1 percent of the government was amazing, ” says Nooh health worker in Kerala southwestern... Parks, Kerala can teach other states, Gujarat ’ s neonatal Mortality rate ( 20 ) and rate.: his office also delivered groceries to those in need top five states in five out of 10 categories of. Most places 20 million or more according to Census 2001 25 wildlife sanctuaries and national parks, ’. 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