There appears to be a major incongruity between the number of migrants returning to the state and the data provided by the Uttarakhand administration about the persons kept in home and institutional quarantine in different parts of the state. As per the data provided by the state administration, a total of 56,672 persons had returned to the state till May 12. Similarly 56,878 people have done inter district movement within the state. As per the guidelines for COVID-19, all the persons coming from other parts of the country to the state should be compulsorily quarantined at home or institutions. On the other hand the state health department in its daily bulletin of May 12 mentioned that 19,969 persons were kept in home quarantine while 2,805 were in facility quarantine. Since majority of the intra-state movement of people and return of the migrants took place in the third stage of lockdown which started on May 4 and considering the huge numbers of inter district and migrants from other states (56,878 and 56,672), it is imperative that the number of persons in quarantine should be in excess of one lakh. It is worth mentioning here that the persons with symptoms of the disease and those who had contact history with the patients of COVID-19 are also kept in the quarantine which should further increase the number of quarantined persons for all practical purposes. When this disparity of data of the state administration was pointed to him, the government spokesperson and senior cabinet minister Madan Kaushik said that the data released by the administration is correct and is updated regularly.
He added that the data of returning migrants includes all those who have moved into the state during the entire period of lockdown and many of them have completed the required quarantine period. Kaushik claimed scanning of every migrant is being done on entry into the state and based on this the suspected people are sent to institutional quarantine and all the others are kept in home quarantine.
Social activist Anoop Nautiyal told The Pioneer that discordance in the numbers of those kept in quarantine and those who have returned to their homes in the state is a point of concern. He said that the departments concerned should cross check the data. One official of the health department accepted that the difference is very large.
He however added that the health department first receives the list of the people in quarantine from the districts and then compiles the data for whole of the state.
This official did not rule out the possibility of breach of communication. It is pertinent to mention here that the returning migrants have come to almost every village of the state and the Pradhans are entrusted with the responsibility of keeping these migrants into home quarantine and it is apparent that they are not able to communicate the exact number of persons kept in home quarantine in their areas.