Kerala govt created a false sense of security, says Ramesh Chennithala

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala here on Thursday held chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his government responsible for creating a false sense of security among people in the fight against Covid-19, leading to a sudden spike in Covid-19 cases in the state.
“As the government had been focussing on creating a selfboosting narrative on how successfully it handled the deadly pandemic, people in different walks of lives must have felt relaxed and lowered their guard against the virus,” he said.“Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan now holds heath workers and the opposition responsible for the surge in Covid cases. His claims are like someone blaming his tools for the bad work he does. Health workers in the state do an exemplary work as always and the chief minister should stop blaming them. It was the government that ran a propaganda saying that Kerala has vanquished the pandemic. It’s this untimely self-boosting tactic that now backfired,” Chennithala said.
The opposition leader also termed baseless the chief minister’s allegations that opposition showed a double face in Covid-19 containment. “The fact is that the chief minister himself is hypocritical and self-contradicting. On August 2 morning, while inaugurating family health centres, the chief minister had said negligence of health workers was resulting in the spike in number of infections and by the evening he put the blame on the opposition too,” he said.
Chennithala said that the opposition was fully cooperating with the government and blamed the CM for ignoring their call for more testing. “The CM never listened to such calls as he was lost in an image-building exercise and even gloated about having flattened the curve in May itself. Kerala needs to ramp up testing to 40,000-50,000 per day to contain the pandemic. That’s the only way to fight the disease,” he added.