![]() Also, aside our intellectual curiosity and thirst for knowledge - after all, they are a huge mystery in this technological world that doesn't allow mystery - we don't actually need them to exist. I mean, they have been there for over twelve thousand years or more and they are still going on quite well. They don't need our technology, our knowledge, our complex philosophy and our gods to exist and survive. What do they eat? What do they drink? How do they deal with their dead? Do they have any kind of political organization or familial institution? Do they worship any god? Do they believe in any entity? And how important answer to these questions is for our comprehension of life, the world and the cosmos? To the last question, there might be an answer and that would be: absolutely any. As far as we can imagine, there might be no written registers of their backgrounds, for it is possible they don't have an written alphabet, which brings to the other supposition that the language they speak, whatever it is, has no relation at all to any of the +6000 languages there are today. They are a very primitive tribe, still living in the Neolithic - or even in the Paleolithic. It is crystal clear that they don't want anything to do with anything or anyone outside their world, circumscribed by the North Sentinel Island. Their hostility towards the outsiders hadn't changed a bit since the first attempts. There are only about 200 surviving members of the Shompen tribe, 150 of the Sentinelese tribe, 100 of the Onge and about 400 of the nomadic Jarawa tribe, who have reportedly moved deep into the jungle since the outbreak of the pandemic in an attempt to protect themselves.After the 2004 Tsunami, some volunteers from the UN had been sent to the island, in order to provide help to them, in case they need some. The indigenous Andamanese population has been falling for decades as they have poor immunity to many diseases and have been particularly vulnerable to tuberculosis and alcoholism. Their language has largely been lost – in April this year the last speaker of the Sare Great Andamanese language died from multiple health problems – and the tribe now mostly speaks Hindi. Today there are just over 50 people left, and members from only two of the 10 tribes have survived. In 1788, when the British first tried in vain to invade the islands, the Great Andamanese numbered between 5,000 and 8,000, and were made up of 10 different tribes. North Sentinel Island, whose people are hostile to outsiders and unlikely to be aware of the coronavirus pandemic. The Great Andamanese are one of five tribes living on the Andaman Islands who are feared to be highly vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic. “No one is allowed on to the island until they have been tested negative, and so right now we have ruled out the possibility of new cases.”Īrjun Munda, the union minister of tribal affairs, voiced concern at the Great Andamanese infections and said the government was taking “all precautionary measures” to keep them safe. ![]() “All routes of possible transmission are being monitored,” he said. Roy was confident that with continued testing and further restrictions on movement, the Great Andamanese people would remain safe. The six who originally tested positive for the virus in Port Blair are under observational home quarantine. The four tribespeople on the island who tested positive were aged between 26 and 55, and all have been taken to hospital as a precautionary measure, though Roy said none showed any severe symptoms. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which have a population of 400,000, have reported a total of 2,944 coronavirus cases among the non-tribal population. While the virus was initially concentrated in India’s densely populated cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, it has now spread into rural and isolated communities that have limited healthcare resources. There were 1,023 deaths recorded in the same 24-hour period, taking the country’s toll to 60,472. ![]() On Thursday India reported a record daily tally of 75,760 new coronavirus infections, pushing its total to 3.1 million. “Over the last few months, every person who has been travelling to these islands, particularly the restricted travel areas, has been tested, but it seems that someone carrying the virus must have gone undetected,” he said. The samples showed that four other members of the tribe who had never left the island were also infected with the virus.ĭr Avijit Roy, a regional senior health director, said the virus had reached the island even though Covid tests were being carried out on every person travelling to any of the 38 inhabited islands. A team of healthcare workers sailed over to the small island last week to carry out tests after six members of the tribe, who had travelled to the region’s capital, Port Blair, for work, tested positive for the virus on the mainland.
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