Coronavirus Outbreak: Ruthless Containment Saved Us from Becoming the Next Italy, Says Bhilwara SDM Tina Dabi

New Delhi: As the number of Covid-19 infections and deaths in India continues to rise, Rajasthan’s Bhilwara has bucked the trend, being the only district with a high number of cases to show a decline in new infections.

Speaking to News18, IAS officer Tina Dabi the SDM of Bhilwara city, said it could easily have gone the other way. “Bhilwara could have been the next Italy. We had the numbers, we could have been staring at community transmission," she said.

Dabi is also part of the district administration team credited for the successful containment of the novel coronavirus in the hotspot. “An early and complete lockdown is what stopped it. This is what we need right now," she said.

It all began when a doctor tested positive in a private hospital in Bhilwara city. Soon after, 15 medical practitioners were also found to be infected. The private hospital where doctors and nurses tested positive came under Dabi’s jurisdiction.

The district administration decided right away to go for a complete shutdown and Bhilwara was sealed off, much before the nationwide lockdown that came into effect on March 25.

After the shutdown, the administration began screening all suspected patients and eventually ended up screening most of the city’s residents. “An aggressive screening process was conducted in different phases. First, medical staff and their families and contacts, then the families of those they came in contact with and eventually, the whole city was screened," the IAS officer said.

The administration also ensured strict enforcement of social distancing norms. Community leaders were made “Corona fighters" to monitor social distancing, especially in villages.

“As our DM Rajendra Bhatt calls it, ‘ruthless containment’ is what we did in Bhilwara. Aggressive screening, testing and lockdown is the Bhilwara model and I believe it should be replicated in other affected districts as well," said Dabi.