A village in the southern state of Kerala is distributing 10,000 umbrellas to residents to help maintain social distancing, according to a senior local council official.
“We hope the clouds of Covid-19 may clear soon but during the summer and upcoming days of rain let us keep social distancing by unfolding an umbrella,” PS Jyothi, president of the Thannermukkom village council said.
The idea is to stand next to one another with open umbrellas to maintain a distance of at least a meter, Jyothi added. Along with umbrellas, two masks each will also be distributed to citizens.
Women’s neighborhood groups will stitch 100,000 masks under the Kudumbashree initiative in Kerala. The initiative, which mobilizes community groups, was launched under the Kerala state poverty mission to empower women but is being repurposed to fight coronavirus at a local level, according to Jyothi.
The state has used several innovative measures to help contain the spread of coronavirus and trace infected patients.
Walk-in kiosks were installed in a district in Kerala to facilitate sample collection earlier this month, and a robot is being used in a Kerala hospital to dispense medicines and food to patients in isolation wards to reduce human contact.
Kerala was the first state in India to report cases of the coronavirus. The state currently has 458 cases of coronavirus including 4 deaths. India has a total of 27,892 cases of the coronavirus, including 872 deaths, according to the Indian Ministry of Health.
