BENGALURU: People who are asymptomatic Covid-positive patients and have a family doctor monitoring them are being forced to go into Covid Care Centres (CCCs) by BBMP officials. This despite medical advice from doctors that home isolation will suffice, as patients are not suffering from cough, cold or fever. Also, no officials come to check on these patients to see whether they need CCC admission.
Naveen’s 40-year-old wife got a call from the BBMP that she was positive. Their physician, Dr T R Chandrasekhar, who is a member of Critical Care Society, Bengaluru and intensivist, Institute of Gastroenterology Organ Transplant, (IGOT), Victoria Hospital, deemed her fit for home isolation. But the BBMP officials were in no mood to listen to the family.
“They insisted that a CCC was the only option and told us that home quarantine was withdrawn 10-12 days ago. When I asked for a document to prove it, they did not have any. It was a harrowing experience and I got calls from multiple officials asking us to shift her to the CCC and one officer even threatened to go to cops if we did not agree,” Naveen told TNIE.
After a lot of persuasion and mentioning that a doctor from Victoria Hospital was monitoring them, a consent form was sent by BBMP for them to sign. It stated that they are under home quarantine on their own will and against advice from the BBMP.After an inter-state returnee tested positive in Keerthi’s apartment, one of the five family members, who is a 20-year-old woman, tested positive, on Tuesday. She too had no symptoms.
“They have a 3 BHK house with attached bathrooms in bedrooms, which was sufficient for her to be under home quarantine. We have been fighting very hard with the local PHC doctor who is hell-bent on sending her to a Sri Sri Ayurveda Hospital which is a CCC. No BBMP official came to assess the patient to declare whether she is fit for home quarantine or CCC,” Keerthi P K said,
Even people from the Apthamitra helpline called the patient urging her to go to a CCC. Later in the evening, only after reports of tele-consultation with their family doctor stating she is fit for home quarantine were sent to the PHC doctor, did BBMP stop pursuing them. BBMP Commissioner Manjunath Prasad and Special Commissioner of Public Health D Randeep were unavailable for comment.