Corona positive patient raises concern about poor response by health officials
Gurugram: With over 18 hours having passed without any sign of medical help coming through, Vineet Kumar, a coronavirus (Covid-19) patient lodged at a Sector 9 quarantine
Gurugram: With over 18 hours having passed without any sign of medical help coming through, Vineet Kumar, a coronavirus (Covid-19) patient lodged at a Sector 9 quarantine centre, regretted his decision to come to the facility. Kumar, a resident of Ganga Vihar in Sector 12, had tested positive on May 15.
“I got myself tested privately after a colleague had tested positive at work as I was worried about my family,” said Kumar, who works at the Punjab National Bank. He alleged that after getting the results, he tried calling all the government helplines and sought help from the Aarogya Setu application as well but received no response. On May 16, an ambulance arrived to take him to the quarantine centre, where he is currently sharing a room with five others at the facility.
Kumar’s ordeal was shared by his brother-in-law, Ankit Bhardwaj, on a Twitter thread on Sunday listing all the steps taken by the family to get Kumar to a quarantine facility. He wrote that after receiving the results, the family reached out to government helplines for treatment and guidance and updated their status on Aarogya Setu application but received no response.
“After over 50 calls and waiting for a whole day, finally one helpline responded,” he wrote. Bhardwaj’s tweet saw responses from Twitter handles of the district administration, which wrote that the issue has been raised with the nodal officer of the facility and that efforts were being made to resolve it on a priority basis.
Kumar said that samples from the other members of his family were collected on Sunday.
“I currently have no symptoms but seeing the state of the facility, I am worried that my health may worsen. I wish to complete the rest of the quarantine at home,” said the 30-year-old.
After the matter was raised on the social media platform, the official handle of the Gurugram deputy commissioner of Gurugram, Amit Khatri, reached out and said: “Our officer got in touch with you with regards to this matter. Apart from making a note of the issues you raised we have also informed the nodal officer for the facilities and we will be resolving this issue on priority. You can be in touch with us over any issues that you face.”
On Friday, the admin added five containment zones in the district, taking the tally to 37 with new additions to the Gurugram block.
“The patient was totally asymptomatic and he was under our surveillance. We had done proper thermal screening. He has recently been shifted to ESI hospital,” said a senior health official, requesting anonymity.
