No checking, monitoring of travellers by road to Kerala

In about three weeks, it will be one year since India reported its first COVID-19 case. That was on January 30, 2020 - a student of Wuhan University who returned to Kerala tested positive. 

Unlike many other countries, in India, the rise and the drop in the number of positive cases per day has been gradual. The peak was on September 17, when the country saw as many as 97,894 people testing positive. Yesterday, it was 18,222. The following is a screenshot from the NDTV website.

There have been 150,570 deaths out of 1,041,4417 positive cases. That is 1.45%. Worldwide, it's 1,919,357 deaths out of 89,209,954 positive cases - 2.15%

The following table gives the comparative figures. It's a Google News compilation by collating data from Wikipedia, The New York Times and JHU.

India is one country in the top bracket that has been showing a consistent decline over the past two months. (Probably, Italy too, to some extent.) I don't know whether that has anything to do with the very different sort of lockdown we had. It lasted in varying degrees of toughness for as long as eight months.

The strictest phase was the initial one - from March 25 to June 7, 2020. After that, there was a series of, what was called, 'unlocks', that lasted till November 30.

TRIP TO KERALA 

I, along with my wife, her brother, mother and niece, reached her home town on Friday evening around 7 pm. We drove down. We began our journey from Bengaluru in the morning around 5.

Prior to that, we registered our particulars on the designated government websites of Tamil Nadu (the state through which we transited) and of Kerala (our destination state). 

However, nowhere en route -- neither at Attibele (the point of entry to Tamil Nadu) nor at Walayar (the point of entry to Kerala) -- were we stopped to have our credentials as interstate travellers checked. Many of my friends who travelled by road to Kerala in the past one month, had the same experience.

This was not the case a few months ago. There was strict monitoring at these border check-posts. Travellers were continuously monitored by local area civic officials. My friends, who had travelled earlier, used to tell me how they kept receiving calls from health department officials, police officials and government doctors; and told about the need to stay at home, and to watch out for symptoms.

Now, the only travellers who are checked are the ones who come via flights. At the arriving airport they need to declare their travel and contact details, and are told to be in quarantine for seven days.

In compliance with the State government regulations, we are in quarantine for a week.

I am not sure why there has been such a relaxation. One reason could be that the situation in Kerala has been improving, though very slowly, after it hit a peak in October. 

The second reason could be that people have gotten used to the new lifestyle that is dictated by the safety guidelines. 

The third reason could be that people who come to Kerala by road are mostly from the two neighbouring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, where the cases have dropped significantly. So the probability of them carrying the virus could be less.

NEED TO BE CAUTIOUS

The state is still seeing quite a high number of fresh cases daily. It's averaging around 5,000. It peaked in October when it was around 7,000 to 8,000.

When we look at the spread of this disease, it's quite difficult to see a pattern across regions. There are a number of variables that are influencing the rate of infection.

And now to make matters worse, we have seen a more virulent form of the virus wreaking havoc, especially in the UK. Some of my doctor friends have been telling me they don't know if the virus that's circulating in India itself can mutate in the coming months.

Even if the situation is getting better, it would be prudent to be cautious.