Citizens push norms aside, rub shoulders to shop for lockdown

‘Full Shutdown’ Gambit Fails In All 5 TN Cities

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:26.04.2020

The Tamil Nadu government’s ‘complete’ lockdown from Sunday gambit for five red hotspot districts panned out disastrously on Saturday as people in their thousands poured out of their homes, ignoring social distancing norms, to stock up on essentials.

Shops, small and big, markets and roads were all teeming with panicked crowds on a buying spree. The scene was identical in Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore, Tirupur and Salem — traffic snarls on roads and teeming crowds in markets.

Policemen were mute spectators as people blatantly ignored the lockdown protocol under the Epidemic Diseases Act, the Disaster Management Act and Section 144 of the CrPC, to clean out the shelves in stores. Goods, essential and non-essential items, vanished; no one cared about prices. The government extended the timings of ration shops to 3pm, but they had run out of stocks.

Defending the government’s decision to enforce a ‘complete’ lockdown, health minister C Vijayabaskar said, “Chennai is a densely populated region. It is a challenge to deal with a pandemic like this in a city with a population of nearly 1.5 crore people.”

Meanwhile, chairman of the scientific advisory committee of the National Institute of Epidemiology Dr Jayaprakash Muliyil said “Lockdown is not going to get us anywhere, but it will probably prolong the agony. I am not privy to the information with the government, so I suppose there must be some reason for the government to do it.”

JOSTLING FOR SPACE: Crowd at the Villivakkam market on Saturday

Central team does a spot check in city

An interministerial central team led by National Disaster Management Authority additional secretary V Thiruppugazh arrived in the city on Friday to take stock of the corporation’s anti-Covid measures. High incidence of the virus infection — close to 500 positive cases as on Saturday — and large number of lockdown violations — nearly 50,000 cases so far — has prompted the Centre to declare the situation in the city as ‘serious’. P 2

SHEER MADNESS,