City’s son sets ‘Kasaragod Initiative of Kerala Police’ model to contain COVID-19
| Date :19-Apr-2020 |
Vijay Sakhare, IGP
By Vikas Vaidya :
IGP Vijay Sakhare’s efforts bring down coronavirus cases
‘0-0-1-0-1-0’. Such type of statistics by a bowler would make him feel proud. In the days of T20 cricket, conceding only two runs can be a great example by a bowler. But this is not the statistics of an over bowled by any bowler. It is the statistics of coronavirus positive cases of Kasaragod district in Kerala. Kasaragod district once was heading towards becoming a biggest hotspot for coronavirus. But a top cop made all the difference. It was all-police initiative. In last six days this district witnessed only two COVID-19 positive cases. It was mid March when Kasaragod district in Kerala witnessed too much cases of Covid-19 that compelled Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to intervene.
Vijay Sakhare, IGP with his team in action.
He roped in a top cop who swung into action and came up with a unique initiative that brought down the Covid-19 cases drastically. Name of this top cop is Vijay Sakhare. He is son of Nagpur and made his city proud as his ‘Kasaragod Initiative of the Kerala Police’ has set a benchmark for the whole country. It was all-police initiative that made miracle. On March 31, coronavirus positive cases in Kasargod reached 106. On April 6, the number was164. This was the issue of concern for the authorities. Meanwhile, Sakhare started his initiative gradually and the district witnessed a significant drop in the cases across the district. Vijay Sakhare is Inspector General of Police.
To know what Sakhare did that resulted in reduction of cases, ‘The Hitavada’ contacted him. While talking to ‘The Hitavada’ on phone, he said, “It was our containment strategy that involved three locks-- Lock 1, Lock 2, and Lock 3 through which we mainly focussed on keeping people away from getting mixed up.” The initiative that Sakhare introduced has some technological components. Sakhare himself is an engineer who did his graduation from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT) so that background might have helped him.
Explaining the initiative, Sakhare said, “Lock 1 is related to usual policing methods like road block and mobile patrolling. Lock 2 is related to creation of Geographical Information System that mapped all the positive cases, all home quarantined persons, all the persons came from abroad. It also includes the close contacts of the positive persons.” These two locks made larger impact and cases got reduced. Still a push was much needed. “Then I decided to introduce third lock. Under this third phase, we declared the seven areas in district as containment zones.
The most important factor of this three-lock system, we got input of the positive persons, their close contacts, the places or persons they met or visited etc. Such persons were locked and here we used technological component,” pointed out Sakhare. “Some mobile applications were installed in phones of the close contacts of the persons. These apps helped police in sending alert to the authority if a person under quarantine leaves home who can be warned. Police also took legal actions against such persons,” informed Sakhare. While replying to the question whether his engineering background helped him to develop the app, Sakhare laughed and stated, “I did not develop the app.
The idea is mine but our expert team did the honour. We brought several initiatives like home delivery service, deploying drones for surveillance, launching of WhatsApp-group to start door-delivery service etc.” Kerala Government is mulling over to implement this initiative throughout the state. Other states also should take a cue from this initiative that would help in bringing down the cases. Vijay Sakhare is real brother of well-known Intensivist Dr Ajay Sakhare of Nagpur who is leading Critical Care Specialist with Wockhardt Hospital.