BHUBANESWAR: Hung inside the swab collection centre set up by Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) in City’s Saheed Nagar on Saturday, a poster read: ‘precaution is better than cure!”
But not everyone present at the centre was as cautious as the situation would have demanded them to be. Despite being direct contacts of Covid patients, a few ‘overconfident’ people chose to compromise the precautionary measures as they waited for their turn.
Norms of social distancing were being violated for around three hours inside the centre’s ventilated hall. Some participants, who objected to such violations, felt as if they have come to cast votes or collect ration. “Some people would lean over the other person’s shoulder standing in a queue to hear Covid tales or discuss mismanagement. Growing restless for having to wait, they would come close to the person standing in front - as if the move would ensure speedy collection of the swab,” said one.
In fact, it was practically impossible to maintain the prescribed two metre distance between two persons standing in the queue of at least 30 people, covering the entire length of an asymmetrical room. Not just the rule of gap, but also the norm of masking was taken for granted. A few had loosely tied handkerchiefs around their mouth, sparing the nose for ‘some fresh air.’ At times, the ‘trusted guard’ (the handkerchief) slipped off its owner’s mouth as he or she engaged in conversations to make the wait ‘easier’ and ‘entertaining.’
A few chewing ‘gutkha’ refused to give away the irksome habit of copious spitting. As they spitted out of the hall’s window, there wasn’t any sign of fear or guilt-forget awareness! All such activities went on as the volunteers conducting the tests were jotting down details of people to be tested in an adjacent room. Entry of outsiders was banned in this room. The volunteers, who left it all on people’s conscience and judgement, would occasionally come to caution people but only while recording videos of the centre. There wasn’t anyone assigned at the entry point to check whether people wore masks correctly or queued up as per social distancing norms.
“We have been telling them to maintain social distance and wear mask. What can we do if people don’t obey the norms?” replied a volunteer, when asked about the violations. The violations were at peak when people had to wait for the health worker to change his PPE kit. For safety purpose, he changed gears after each batch of 30. The sanitation worker would spray disinfectant on the chairs placed at the waiting hall after each round of collection. He also requested people to not exchange chairs.
Alas! The requests yielded no results. People kept changing chairs sans any fear. However, the volunteers or BMC officials refuted such allegations. Amidst all this, the dilemma to get tested continued. The camp where 100 names were listed for sample collection by the civic body, sources revealed that 98 had turned up. There also last minute additions in the list of direct contacts who had not admitted about their links with positive patients while officials conducted surveillance.