Category: Lifestyle

Seven migrant workers, who came back home to West Bengal’s Purulia district from Chennai amid the coronavirus-induced lockdown, perched on a banyan tree to remain in quarantine in the absence of separate room for self-isolation in their small huts, Gulf News reported.

After several days in their ‘temporary home’, the workers were on Saturday ordered to come down by the local administration.

The workers, all residents of Bangidiha village of Purulia district, said as they live in one-room mud huts with their families, there is no way they can keep themselves in isolation.

However, none of them have displayed symptoms linked to COVID-19, nor have they undergone any test for the disease.

“At present we don’t have any health issues. But in case we are detected positive for the disease at a later date, then at least none of the villagers will be infected because of us,” said one of the workers Bijay Singh Laya.

The workers reached Kharagpur junction station on Sunday last from Chennai where they underwent thermal screening and tests but the doctors did not find any symptom of the disease. “However, they asked us to stay in quarantine for 14 days as a safety measure”.

“But we don’t have any separate personal room in our home. So, we decided to live on the branches of the banyan tree just outside our village,” he said.

The seven labourers tied their beds to the branches of the tree, and used a mosquito net to prevent themselves from getting bitten.

Their family members brought them a daily ration of rice, pulses, and vegetables, along with other cooking implements and left after keeping those under the tree, while strictly maintaining the norms of social distancing.

“We get down from the tree, cook, and then go up again,” said one of the workers.

Villagers on their part kept night vigil by turn to ensure the tree-dwellers are not devoured by wild animals from the nearby forest or bitten by venomous snakes.

However, when the matter came to the attention of the local administration they asked the workers to return to their village.

At least 40,000 people who may have caught the coronavirus from a ‘super-spreader’ guru are under strict quarantine in 20 villages of Indian Punjab after linked to just one man.

According to BBC, the 70-year-old guru, Baldev Singh, had returned from a trip to Europe’s virus epicentre Italy and Germany when he went preaching in more than a dozen villages in Punjab state. The 70-year-old died of coronavirus — a fact found out only after his death, according to the BBC.

The guru and his two associates — who have also tested positive — ignored self-isolation orders on their return from Europe, and were on their preaching tour until Singh fell ill and died. He had visited a large gathering to celebrate the Sikh festival of Hola Mohalla shortly before he died. The six-day festival attracts around 10,000 people every day.

A week after his death, 19 of his relatives have tested positive.

India has 640 confirmed cases of the virus, of which 30 are in Punjab. However, experts worry that the real number of positive cases could be far higher given that the South Asian country has one of the lowest testing rates in the world. There are fears that an outbreak in the country of 1.3 billion people could result in a catastrophe.