Team News Riveting
Last year’s NITI Aayog’s Health Index ranked Kerala, followed by Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, as the top performers in health while Bihar and Uttar Pradesh the worst.
Kerala’s health model was hailed worldwide. The state is ironically in competition with Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to outshine in worth performance over dealing with the COVID-19.
As on date, Kerala has 2,21,333 confirmed cases of Coronavirus. The state of Bihar has 1,80,441 confirmed cases. Kerala had surpassed the poorest and most backward state in the country in terms of healthcare.
Similarly, Uttar Pradesh has some 47823 active cases as compared to Kerala’s 80900. The state outshined Uttar Pradesh that has seven times the population of Kerala where the coronavirus cases had been skyrocketing at close to 7000 per day.
In fact, Kerala would cross many other states going by its recent trajectory. But it aggressively reduced testing. The test positive rate in Kerala is an alarming 13.5 per cent as compared to Bihar’s 0.9 per cent where 1.2 lakh tests are conducted every day on average.
Despite all odds, Kerala model is to high heaven all the way from April to July. A comparison between Bihar and Kerala in terms of healthcare certainly makes a good analysis.
Bihar has been testing much more than Kerala, doing well over 1 lakh tests a day. Kerala has been lagging very far behind at just 50,000 or so per day. So far, Bihar has done 70 lakh tests and Kerala only 28 lakh. The test positive rate in Kerala is now among the highest in the country. And the test positive rate in Bihar is possibly the lowest.
Global PR, global fame, international awards—but when it comes to delivery on the ground, Kerala’s healthcare stands at the same level as Bihar. Ministers making tall claims in International media did not bring pride for Kerala.
Now that Kerala’s healthcare system has proved no better than Bihar, the scales should fall away from everyone’s eyes.
