TIRUCHY: While undergoing swab tests, government and private sector employees are providing their office addresses as contact details due to the social stigma attached to coronavirus.. With many Tiruchiites providing their office addresses to avoid health officials knocking on the doors of their houses, the task of identifying positive persons has become onerous.
Amid growing corona cases in Tiruchy district, the additional headache of social stigma is delaying the response of officials, with more and more people providing non-residential or even manufactured addresses. As a a result of this, the time taken to isolate positive patients has increased at least by two to three times, according to officials.
A senior official said, "Fearing they would become the talk of the area, many employees are providing addresses of government offices or banks where they work during testing. Due to this, it has become a strenuous task to first isolate them and then track their travel history. What people fail to understand is they are only putting their family members at risk by hiding such vital information."
Pointing to a recent case of an employee of a nationalised bank providing the bank address as the official residence, a civic body official lamented, "When we reached out to the bank employee for a residential address, the person's colleagues yelled at us saying there was no need for us to know. The patient claimed he is going to get treatment in a private hospital and there was no need for us to contact him. In this case, how can we conduct disinfection works or isolate the building to avoid others contracting the virus?"
In another instance, a Corporation employee provided the civic body's office as a residential address. The official said, "The person did not want his family members to be isolated or questioned, so he provided the Corporation office's address. When contacted, the person claimed there was no reason to provide a home address and he would automatically get admitted. If officials behave this way, how can we expect the public to be honest?" Reportedly, in a few cases, patients even switch off their phones as soon as the test results arrive, so there would be no way for health or civic body officials to contact them.
When contacted, District Collector S Sivarasu said, "In a few cases, isolating patients has taken five to six hours. Efforts are being taken to collect proper addresses during testing, so this can be avoided. However, this problem does not occur with samples taken from fever camps, as officials know the location."