Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court on Wednesday said the state government should ramp up health infrastructure keeping in mind that there could be a third or even a fourth wave of coronavirus because people are not going to follow the rules regarding face mask, social distancing and sanitisation.
Observing that discipline enforced in China cannot be implemented in India, a division bench of Justices Bela Trivedi and Bhargav D Karia asked the Gujarat government to ramp up infrastructure for medical facilities to deal with any fresh wave of the pandemic.
The bench made the observations while hearing a suo motu PIL on the COVID-19 situation and other related issues in Gujarat.
It said ramping up of health facilities, especially in rural Gujarat, should be on a long-term basis and not on short-term to address just the ongoing second wave of the pandemic. "What about this type of third or fourth wave? The third wave will be followed by the fourth wave, because the people of the state are not going to follow, to put on masks, to have social distancing or sanitise. Nobody in this country is going to do that, so every six month there will be a wave," the court observed. "With this understanding you have to prepare yourself," the court told Advocate General Kamal Trivedi during the hearing of the PIL. When Trivedi compared India to European nations and said seven advanced countries combined together have seen more casualties and suffering due to the pandemic, the court said the only country India can be compared with is China, which is" incomparable".