Ensure coronavirus norms are followed
On Sunday last, something disturbing happened in Odisha’s Cuttack. A group of people who tested positive for the coronavirus were being moved from the Acharya Harihar Post Graduate Institute of Cancer (AHPGIC) to a designated Covid hospital. When asked to board a bus, they created a ruckus and even threatened to infect people around them through physical contact. The act looked outrageous on the face of it but bear their plight in mind.
Some of them were patients admitted to the AHPGIC for cancer treatment but ended up getting infected with the deadly Covid-19. In the last two days, at least 12 deaths, including that of two cancer patients, have been reported from Odisha. To cut a long story short, premier healthcare institutions such as the cancer facility, the state’s biggest, had to bear the brunt of a cluster of over 110 cases due to the absence of a standard operating procedure.
Similar spikes have been reported from other major healthcare facilities of the state. A private hospital in capital Bhubaneswar, where over 50 Covid cases were detected within no time, was sealed for violation of guidelines. Alarmed by the case load, the Odisha government has issued an SOP and made testing mandatory for every patient seeking treatment in hospitals.
Even as the surge in positive cases takes the Covid tally past 10,000 in Odisha, more and more public offices are falling ‘sick’. Banks, transport, and municipal offices are being shut down for temporary periods following detection of cases. The Bhubaneswar campus of an IT major was also sealed. While such incidents are expected, the trend must be arrested at once as they point to a clear lack of adherence to guidelines, even in government establishments that must function to deliver key services during such a juncture.
The Naveen Patnaik government, when it initiated Unlock 2, had put the onus on individual establishments and their respective heads to stick to the norms. It must see that the guidelines are followed in letter and spirit, lest important service providers, including frontline workers, get affected. The Covid battle is going to be a long haul and the state needs to be extremely careful from now on.