Another IAS officer tests +ve in MP

Bhopal: Another Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer tested positive for Covid-19 in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday as the number of people diagnosed with the

Bhopal: Another Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer tested positive for Covid-19 in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday as the number of people diagnosed with the disease in the state rose to 741 and prompted the state government to constitute an advisory panel to deal with the seriousness of the situation.

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Officials said the officer is the fourth top bureaucrat to have tested positive and all of them are associated with the state health department. Over 70 officials and employees from the department have contracted the disease and the health department’s directorate is now one of the Covid-19 hotspots in the state.

HT on Saturday reported that almost every senior member of the Madhya Pradesh state health department is in quarantine or in the hospital after two officers allegedly flouted social distancing norms and suppressed symptoms.

The government had last week instituted an inquiry against the officers and expanded testing to arrest the spread of Covid-19 in the state. The state has one of the lowest rates of testing in the country.

The health department reported its first case on April 2 when the managing director and an IAS officer in the National Health Mission tested positive. Two days later, another IAS officer contracted the virus. An additional director in the department, who returned from a foreign country, too, tested positive. On Saturday, the principal secretary in the department, who had allegedly not reported to the authorities about her son’s US trip, tested positive.

HT reported the two IAS officers heading the department showed symptoms of cold and cough almost the same time but continued to attend meetings and were responsible for at least 50 infections.

Madhya Pradesh is the fourth worst-hit state by the pandemic and has recorded 127 new Covid-19 cases since Monday, the highest jump in a day so far, the state health department said.

The state government said the technical advisory committee will include doctors from Bhopal’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences. “Technical advisory committee is being constituted in view of seriousness of Covid-19 infection in the state. The committee will chalk out the action plan for control of Covid-19 and daily analyse the situation in the state,” the government said in a statement

The statement added health services director Sudam Khade will head the committee while additional director Santosh Shukla will be its coordinator.

Additional chief secretary (health) Mohammad Suleman said of the 127 new cases reported since Monday, 98 were from Indore and 20 from Bhopal. He added those tested positive in Indore were under quarantine as they had come in contact with the patients identified earlier.

Officials said a compounder, who died of Covid-19 in Indore last week, has become the first person to have contracted the disease in Tikamgarh district. He had returned to his native place on March 28 despite the lockdown restrictions. His sample was sent for testing on April 11 and is believed to have contracted the virus at the clinic of a doctor, who has tested positive for Covid-19 in Ujjain.