Telangana Health Minster Eetela Rajender recently held a press conference and spoke about the state of transmission of the COVID-19 in Telangana. This is no different from the KCR’s previous press meets in terms of underestimation of COVID’s capability. Rajender’s words simply desired to reduce the panic among the people but they might also invoke negligence.
Rajender said that this virus even existed in a developed country like America and mentioned about the number of deaths that are being happened in that country. He later affirmed that the virus that has been spread in Telangana doesn’t have the capability to kill people effectively when compared to other counties and states. He cited the low number of deaths (>10) that are being happened in Telangana to support his statement.
The question from the netizens is, on what basis do Rajendra expressed his confidence over the incapability of the virus to kill the people? Are there any experimental determinations from the lab or epidemiological results that the government has analyzed and compared with other countries? Recently a top media channel did some sought of spy work and revealed that Telangana is deliberately under-reporting the number of deaths that are happening due to COVID infection and they rounded that number around ’50’.
Another point that Rajender mentioned is that it is a very common disease like Pneumonia and other viral infections and the people who got killed are the ones who neglected the infection and didn’t take proper medical treatment in-time. It is very unfortunate to hear these kinds of words from a Health Minister of the state. First of all, COVID cannot be compared to any other viral infection or condition. Its deadliest nature is the ‘ease of transmission’ and no virus can give competition to the Novel Corona Virus in this aspect.
Coming to deaths, there are so many people who lost their lives on ventilators in Telangana. The mortality rate depends upon the co-morbidity conditions, age, underlying disease, life threatening complications e.t.c but it is definitely not all about negligence. Though Eetela was trying to alert the people to get proper medical treatment at earliest, he can’t mislead the people with false and manipulated statements. The Telugu states suffered a lot already through these statements from the Chief Ministers and Eetela cannot repeat the same just to reduce the panic among the people.
