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Bengal HC hears plea for testing data
A division bench of Calcutta high court chief justice T B N Radhakrishnan and justice Arijit Banerjee on Thursday heard a petition that seeks data from the West
A division bench of Calcutta high court chief justice T B N Radhakrishnan and justice Arijit Banerjee on Thursday heard a petition that seeks data from the West Bengal government on the number of people tested for Covid-19 and the number of fatalities. The bench, before which the state government submitted a report, will hear both sides on Friday.
The petition was filed on April 6 by Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Fuad Halim, who is a practising doctor.
“The main contention of the petition is that the West Bengal government is not following the guidelines of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) of the government of India on testing, data sharing and safety precautions,” Halim’s lawyer and former Kolkata mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya said.
The hearing was held through video conferencing in keeping with safety norms during the lockdown. Bharatiya Janata Party state secretary Ritesh Tiwari and a doctor ,who wrote separate letters to the chief justice, demanding the court’s intervention and seeking the same data, were also made parties to the hearing.
“In my petition, I raised several issues, including the unclear status of the Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata which the state government earlier said would be turned into the country’s biggest hospital for Covid-19 cases with more than 3,000 beds. The government is not saying what happened after that announcement,” Halim told HT.
Some wards at Medical College and Hospital are shut down at present. Two days ago, a woman who recently gave birth and was admitted in the maternity ward, tested positive for Covid-19. The other patients in the maternity ward were shifted and sent to quarantine along with some doctors and medical staff.
“The court has asked the government to declare the status on tests being down on people, the number of people who tested positive and those who died. The court also wants to know whether medical staff are being provided with personal protection equipment {PPE} etc,” said Halim.
The Bengal government has come under criticism in recent weeks as, unlike other states in India, it is against outright linking deaths of people with co-morbid conditions such as diabetes, heart ailments and kidney disease to Covid-19 even if they have been infected by the virus.
According to experts, such conditions make the disease deadlier. Such deaths are being treated as results of co-morbidity in which a person suffers from one or more conditions in addition to the infection.
Last week, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said, “We have formed a committee of five doctors who will decide the actual cause of death. They are the experts, I am not. We do not want to create panic among people. Please trust the doctors.”
Referring to the other conditions listed by the government, Banerjee said, “People suffering from some chronic diseases are infected easily (by Covid-19).”
HT earlier reported that the government issued an order on April 5, in which doctors signing death certificates have been asked to fill a form which is being reviewed by the panel of five doctors before a death is attributed to Covid-19.
There are 24 test reports, including those for scrub typhus, CT scan of the thorax, and dengue, malaria, urea, creatinine, blood, urine, CPK (enzymes in blood to diagnose a heart attack) and procalcitonin (substance in blood produced by bacterial infection) that doctors signing death certificates have been asked to attach.
Meanwhile, the state government said three more deaths caused by Covid-19 had been confirmed taking the toll to 10, while 24 new cases were detected .
Chief secretary Rajiva Sinha said Kolkata and Howrah figured in the ‘red zone’ earmarked by the Union health ministry.
