Updated: October 15, 2020 7:21:12 am
Women volunteers prepare Covid kits in Patna. Dipankar ghose
There are 20 minutes until 8pm and the enthusiasm is waning. For more than 11 hours, 500 women have been sorting and wrapping, raising a hand when they run out of equipment. In an indoor room the size of a hockey field, a voice booms into a microphone: “Chalu rakho (Keep it up).” Outside the microphone, there is another instruction: “Music chalu karo, thoda energy badhao (Start music, increase energy)”. Soon, smiles fill the room as a Bhojpuri song begins to play. In the halls of Gyan Bhawan in Patna, an elegant convention center generally used for exhibitions and conferences, the music is the closest to normal that will be heard for the next few days. Because, with only fifteen days to go until the Bihar elections, this is where a gigantic exercise is taking place to create Covid kits, for voters, voting personnel and security personnel.
Sudhir Kumar, General Manager of Bihar Medical Services & Infrastructure Corporation Ltd (BMSICL), said that the female volunteers (NGO staff, ASHA workers, and noon meals staff) come in two shifts starting at 8 a.m. and ending at 12 hours later. “300 come in the first shift and 200 in the second. The biggest challenge is that the pace can’t slow down, ”said Kumar. Each volunteer receives an additional Rs 220 per day, with food and travel to and from the planned location.
Patna is one of the three centers where this exercise takes place, the other two are Muzaffarpur and Purnea. “The first day we created 30,000 kits, the second 40,000 and the third (Tuesday) about 60,000. We have to get 5 lakh kits in total from this center, ”Kumar said. He is one of 25 BMSICL staff in Bhawan for the entire day.
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If the scale of this exercise, from trucks bringing material to men unloading and loading boxes, underscores the challenge of holding an election during a pandemic, senior health officials said even getting to this stage has been a logistical feat. “When you bid and buy, it can take time. So there are representatives of the state government camping in cities where the companies from which we have acquired material are located, such as Ajmer, Agra, Dehradun and New Delhi. Everything is a new challenge, ”said a senior official.
Another aspect that needs to be addressed, officials said, is the disposal of used material. That is why a protocol has been drawn up for the elimination of biomedical waste, which includes three garbage cans with a capacity of 100 liters per table. The waste material will be transported in dedicated closed vehicles, with GPS-based tracking to the biomedical waste treatment facilities. Officials said they are also looking to adjust the numbers for the helpline and the Sanjeevani app, which provides updates from Covid.
Pratyaya Amrit, Bihar’s health secretary, said that in meetings with the state government, the Electoral Commission has conveyed that this is a poll that will be “seen by the whole world.” “People have expectations of us and trust. The team has taken up this challenge and we leave no stone unturned. This is an opportunity to create a successful model, even in these difficult times, ”said Amrit.
Bihar still has around 600 containment zones and more than 11,000 active cases of which more than 9,000 are in home quarantine. To keep voting safe, the Health Department is planning “100 percent testing” in all containment zones, beginning three days before Election Day. “For example, for the polls that start on October 28, our house-to-house testing in the containment zones will run from October 23-26,” said a senior official.
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Consider the key elements in Bihar’s attempt to keep Covid at bay at the polls:
* For voters: 29 lakh units of hand sanitizer; 18 lakh of face shields; 7.21 crore single-use hand gloves.
* For the Central Police: 5.63 lakh of units of hand sanitizer; 11.26 lakh 3-layer masks; 5.63 lakh of face shields; 11.26 lakh hand gloves.
* For the State Police: 67,830 units of hand sanitizer; 4.06 lakh 3-layer masks; 2.03 lakh of face shields; 4.06 lakh for hand gloves.
* For voting staff: 7.66 lakh of hand sanitizers; 46 lakh 3-layer masks; 7.66 lakh face shields; 23 lakh for hand gloves; 1.06 lakh portable IR thermometers.
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