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Covid-19: Most Madhya Pradesh health dept officials quarantined
Coronavirus update: The government has now instituted an inquiry against the officers and expanded testing in a bid to arrest the spread of Covid-19 in the state, whose two biggest cities, Bhopal and Indore, are reeling under the pandemic.
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, two senior officials said on Friday.
The government has now instituted an inquiry against the officers and expanded testing in a bid to arrest the spread of Covid-19 in the state, whose two biggest cities, Bhopal and Indore, are reeling under the pandemic.
The state, which has one of the lowest rates of testing in the country (70 per million), has 451 cases as of Friday evening. Roughly 70% of these cases were concentrated in Bhopal and Indore, where the administration has set up 70 and 74 containment zones, respectively, with sweeping restrictions on transport and business.
The health department, reported its first case on April 2, when the managing director and IAS officer in the National Health Mission (NHM) tested positive.
Two days later, another IAS officer contracted the virus. Another director in the department, who had returned from a foreign country, tested positive. Despite testing positive, both insisted on working from home and said they did not have any symptoms. On April 8, both of them were taken to a hospital by the state authorities.
By then, 18 health department officials -- including the additional director of health services -- had tested positive, and 40 others were in mandatory home quarantine. On Saturday, the principal secretary in the department who had allegedly not reported to the authorities about her son’s US trip, tested positive.
“The two IAS officers heading the department showed symptoms of cold and cough almost the same time but they continued to attend the meetings in the directorate and the state secretariat,” a top health department official said, requesting anonymity. He said the government now estimated that the two IAS officers were responsible for at least 50 infections in the department.
A second senior health department officer said even social distancing norm was not practiced in the Covid-19 control room of the health directorate. “The control room later became an epicentre of coronavirus spreading,” he added, requesting anonymity.
The government is now focusing on containing the epidemic in Indore, which has 235 cases, and has increased the number of labs from two to seven in the past fortnight. Officials have also intensified efforts to procure more Personal Protective Equipment for health care workers.
“We have decided to divide Indore into different zones and there will be an officer for each of the zones. They will be supported by the local teams. The state government is making all out efforts to break the chain of Covid-19 spread,” said chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday.
