HYDERABAD: In a relief to the Telangana government, a division bench of the High Court on Thursday said there was no need for it to monitor the Covid-19 pandemic situation as it was not as critical anymore. The bench said the situation had improved considerably in the State. “It seems that there is no need for the High Court to monitor this issue keeping in view the drastic fall in positive cases and the measures taken by the State to contain the second strain virus from the United Kingdom. The State is doing its best. At the end of the day, we are convinced that the situation is under control”, the bench observed.
When a batch of petitions, which included 24 PILs seeking directions to the State government to provide medical equipment, medicines and trained staff in all designated Covid-19 hospitals, and another batch PILs filed against exorbitant charges being collected by various private hospitals, came up for hearing, the bench headed by Chief Justice Hima Kohli said except for two to three PILs, all others would be disposed off. “It is heartening to note that over the past several months, with the constant directions issued by this Court and compliance reports submitted by the State, the number of positive cases have reduced to below 500 across the State”, the bench noted. The bench, however, hinted that it would monitor further efforts of the State.
During the hearing, the CJ referred to Delhi, a smaller State, conducting 40,000 tests per day while Telangana conducted around 50,000. “Instead of conducting more tests, the State government approached the Supreme Court on the issue. Conducting more tests will be helpful to public health”, the CJ opined.
Advocate general BS Prasad submitted that four new strain cases were found and all the carriers of this new strain virus were identified, isolated and treated.
The bench directed the State government to file an affidavit indicating the number of tests that would be conducted between January 25 and February 12 this year, including district-wise cases, RT-PCR tests with break up, total number of sero surveillance in the State ever since June 2020 to till date, turnaround time for receiving reports of the RT-PCR tests and the feedback received. The bench posted the matter to February 25 for further hearing.