Anantnag: While the number of Covid-19 cases has continued to surge across Kashmir valley, the number of ‘travellers’ among them has remained on the lower side. As of now, only 9 percent of the infected people have been categorised as travellers – Kashmir residents who have come home from other places.
“Which essentially means that we have long been in the community transmission phase,” a doctor working in SMHS hospital of Srinagar told Kashmir Reader.
The total number of cases in the ten districts of Kashmir valley stands currently at 15,568, out of which only 1,547 are travellers, a senior official in the administration said.
He said that the percentage of travellers is even lower in certain districts.
“For example in Shopian district, only 36 of the total 1,422 infected people were travellers. It is only 2.5 percent of the total cases,” the official said.
Likewise in Anantnag district, only 70 of the 1,278 people infected with the virus were travellers – five percent of the tally.
“The percentage is more than 9 in districts like Kulgam, Srinagar, Kupwara and Bandipora,” the official said.
In Kupwara, 23 percent of the positive cases are travellers, the highest figure in the valley, followed by Budgam with 20 percent, Kulgam with 17 percent and Srinagar with 8.5 percent.
The doctor at SMHS hospital said that Kashmir has been in the community transmission stage for a while now. “When you find the infection in persons who have no travel history and no known contact with a positive person, that essentially means we are in the community transmission stage,” the doctor said, adding that numerous such cases have been found across Kashmir.
Meanwhile in the last ten days, Srinagar district has further plunged into the crisis with a staggering 1,588 fresh cases, which is 386 more than the combined number of cases in four districts of south Kashmir in the same period.
The doctor said that the numbers were only going to increase given the way people of Kashmir were crowding markets on the eve of Eid.
“Look at the markets right now. I shudder at the sight. People have altogether forgotten that we are in the midst of a pandemic. Nobody is taking any precautions, whatsoever,” the doctor said.

Suhail A Shah