Owais Gul
Srinagar, July 11: Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir has yet again topped the list of Coronavirus cases among the 13 districts of the Union Territory and is major COVID hotspots of the UT.
Data available with the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO) suggests that there are over 1000 active COVID cases at present in Srinagar district, highest among all districts of the UT.
Till Friday evening, a total of 1545 people in the district were tested in total while 39 among them have died at different hospitals in Srinagar, it added.
The data further reads that out of 1545, there are 1012 active cases in the district, who have been shifted to the hospital or have been kept in isolation.
In this week only, the district has witnessed 456 COVID cases, the data revealed. On Sunday, 59 COVID cases were recorded in Srinagar district alone. On Monday, 65 cases were detected in Srinagar while on Tuesday, the district recorded 61 cases. 119, 58 and 94 cases were respectively detected on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in Srinagar,” it added.
Meanwhile, the health expert said the growing cases in Srinagar are the outcome of ignoring the preventive measures as well as the lack of awareness among the masses.
Dr. Nisar-ul-Hassan, a prominent flu expert told KNO that one among the reasons behind the spike in the cases was that the people don’t follow the health guidelines. “It seems that the easing of restrictions including opening of gardens have given the people a sense of security due to which they are not following the guidelines. The people don’t even wear the masks,” he said.
He further stated that the people are not following the guidelines due to lack of awareness and improper communication. He said that the people should have been made aware about the magnitude of the problem. “There has not been much awareness among the people. We have not created seriousness among the people in this regard,” he said.
Dr. Hassan added as the cases spike, the people including young without underlying problems are getting infected with the virus; it seems that the virus too may have changed its behavior. “The virus was earlier behaving mildly, but now the situation is not similar, which seems the virus may have changed its behavior,” he said.
He added that to prevent the virus from further spreading, the government should go for another lockdown for some time. “We have no vaccine and have no option left besides going for a brief period of lockdown again to prevent the virus from spreading,” he said
