With alarming rise in number of Covid-19 cases and deaths in Kashmir, Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Sunday urged government to reimpose lockdown in Kashmir to prevent further spread and death due to the novel Coronavirus.
“Lockdown is the only tool to tackle the worrying situation we are in,” said DAK President and influenza expert Dr Nisar ul Hassan.
“Returning to a situation where we will have no control is far worse than a week or two of social measures,” he said in a statement.
Dr Nisar said we are witnessing a horrific situation in hospitals which we have never seen before.
“For the last few days people in large numbers are coming to hospitals with severe bilateral pneumonia requiring oxygen and many needing intensive-care setting.
“Our beds are full, oxygen points are occupied and we don’t have space in ICU’s,” he added.
Dr Nisar said patients are coming with bad lungs when it is difficult to salvage them.”Not only the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions, but young people are now coming with severe disease and some of them are dying. Even pregnant women are not spared,” he said.
Dr Nisar said the virus has become dangerous and is now behaving aggressively which gives us to understand whether the virus has changed (mutated) which can happen.”Earlier, most of the Covid cases in the valley were either asymptomatic or with mild disease,” he said.
Dr Nisar said the virus has taken an ugly turn and the situation has deteriorated.
“If we will not act now, we will be in a situation which will be difficult to control,” he said.Dr Nisar cautioned that there are still a massive number of people in the population who are susceptible to virus and warned if restrictions are not reimposed, we will end up in a worst outbreak.”It is important for policy makers and public to know that decisions need to be based on what is happening with the disease in our community rather than what other places are doing,” he said. “The decisions need to be driven by data rather than public or economic pressure,” said Dr Nisar.