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Delhi will test journalists after +ve cases in Maha, Tamil Nadu
“Reporters are frontline workers in the battle against Covid-19. I salute the work being done by all journalists. Their work is very important for dissemination of authentic information,” the Delhi CM said.
A day after 53 journalists in Mumbai were found to be Covid-19 positive in a health camp conducted by the city’s municipal body, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Tuesday that the Delhi government will conduct free tests for journalists in the Capital city starting Wednesday.
“There are reports coming from different states about journalists being infected by the virus… To ensure media persons in Delhi are safe, we are starting free testing for them from tomorrow,” Kejriwal said during a digital media address. The location for the tests was not announced.
“Reporters are frontline workers in the battle against Covid-19. I salute the work being done by all journalists. Their work is very important for dissemination of authentic information,” the Delhi CM added. A senior official in the chief minister’s office said that any media person, including photojournalists working in the Capital with a valid media identification card would be accepted for the tests. Officials have begun to seek lists of eligible reporters and photojournalists from media houses to draw up batches to undergo testing.
Television and print reporters, camera persons, photographers whose job entails visiting hospitals and other high density areas are at high risk of contracting Sars-Cov-2. Several cities, including Chennai, Jalandhar, and Dharamshala have reported at least 39 cases of positive Covid-19 cases among the fraternity, prompting some states like Karnataka and cities like Gurugram to set up testing facilities specifically for journalists.
At least 27 media persons working with a television news channel in Chennai tested positive for Sars-Cov-2 after 92 employees working for the Tamil channel underwent the tests when a colleague on Sunday was found to be positive for Covid-19. Chennai, which has emerged as one of the hotspots in Tamil Nadu, has 358 cases of infections.
Issac Livingstone, managing director of Sathiyam channel announced that the channel would stop live telecasts. Since reporters go across the state to report news, the current situation was unfortunate, but was also unavoidable, he said.
In Punjab’s Jalandhar district, nine journalists of a leading vernacular media group, which publishes Hindi and Punjabi newspapers, have tested positive in the past week. Most of the journalists, including one designer, are part of the news desk and are between 27 and 42 years old. At least four family members of one of these journalists have also tested positive, while 100 people linked to the media group have been quarantined at home, the health department said. All journalists have been kept in isolation at the Civil Hospital. The site of the media organisation has been sealed off, deputy commissioner Varinder Sharma told Hindustan Times. Another employee of the same news organisation has been found to be positive in Dharamshala, Kangra district, Himachal Pradesh.
The Gurugram health department on Monday began testing journalists in the city. The first batch of 30 samples were tested using Rapid Testing Kits (RTKs), none of which showed the presence of antibodies, indicating that the journalists were Covid-19 negative. However, as per the union ministry’s guidelines, RTKs are only surveillance tests, which need to be borne out by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests.
“We took 30 samples and all of them were negative. On Monday night, the district administration finalized to test journalists after the reports of Mumbai journalists contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus started coming in. A lot of journalists in the city are visiting hospitals, slums and meeting multiple people. Therefore, it became important to test them,” Dr Jaswant Singh Punia, Gurugram’s chief medical officer said. Testing, conducted at the old Civil Hospital, Jharsa Road, will take place on Wednesday too.
Karnataka education minister S Suresh Kumar announced that the state government will also hold tests for media personnel.
On Monday, 53 journalists tested positive for Covid-19 in Mumbai, after Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation-run health camp took the nasal and throat swabs of 171 journalists. All 53 were asymptomatic, and have been moved to a Covid Care Centre in the suburbs. The family members of all these journalists will be tested towards the end of this week, officials said.
Information and Broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar on Monday tweeted, “It is shocking that more than 50 journalists of electronic media, particularly Camera persons, have been found #Corona positive in Mumbai. Every journalist should take proper care.”
The same day, three Chennai journalists tested positive for Covid-19, prompting many to visit government hospitals to undergo tests.
Journalists associations have requested the Centre to extend insurance to journalists covering the Covid-19 pandemic. Some states, like West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, have also announced insurance cover for accredited journalists in the states.
Indeed, the issue of the safety of frontline journalists has been an issue of global concern. The Global Investigative Journalists Network will conduct a webinar on Thursday on the matter, where Richard Dawood, who heads London Fleet Street clinic will offer tips to journalists on how to stay safe.
Last month, the National Geographic Society launched an emergency fund for journalists all over the world who wish to cover COVID-19 within their own communities.
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