CHENNAI: Of the 277 Covid patients who are allegedly missing in the city, the police have tracked down 127 of them after the city corporation filed a complaint. These patients have been placed in care centres now. During a cross-verification exercise with various institutional facilities, the corporation found 277 patients were missing -- all of them belonging to Royapuram, Tondiarpet, and Tiru Vi Ka Nagar.
The police began tracing the patients last week. “Private labs must provide basic information of patients to us and to the Directorate of Public Health. We use the list to track down all positive patients,” said a corporation official. “However, in many of these cases there were discrepancies in addresses. The ground staff were unable to trace the patients.”
Later, using the name and corporation zone, the police tracked down the patients. “In some cases the door numbers got messed up. In a few others the patients were not living in the given address when our ground staff checked.” Now, as per the latest guidelines, it’s mandatory for all patients getting tested at private labs to give their Aadhaar number. The lab has to upload the details on the ICMR website.
Apart from this, the city corporation has also mandated a 14-day quarantine for those taking the RT-PCR test. This includes their family members. “Apart from just containing possible spread, this mandatory home-quarantine period will ensure smooth contact tracing because sometimes, the patient won’t be home when our staff visit the house,’’ corporation official added.
Officials clarified that not all missing patients had given wrong addresses. Some of their phone numbers were wrong, but addresses correct. For some others, streets were correct but door numbers wrong. Corporation commissioner G Prakash says his team is working to avoid such errors and issues from happening in future. Meanwhile, the health department has started adding the left out deaths in the State health bulletin.
Corporation official says...
The mandatory home-quarantine period will ensure smooth contact tracing because sometimes, the patient won’t be home when our staff visit the house.