UP rolls back mobile ban at Covid-19 wards

Director general of the medical education department, Dr KK Gupta, issued a new order which said all patients carrying mobile phones will have to disclose it to medical personnel, who would disinfect the phones and chargers and hand them over to patients at the time of admission.

The Uttar Pradesh government on Sunday withdrew an order baning the use of mobile phones by Covid patients in isolation wards after members of the medical fraternity and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav questioned the move. .

The earlier order, which reached all medical institutes, had restricted patients from bringing their cell phones to isolation wards and directed medical teams to provide one or two common phones. (AP)

Director general of the medical education department, Dr KK Gupta, issued a new order which said all patients carrying mobile phones will have to disclose it to medical personnel, who would disinfect the phones and chargers and hand them over to patients at the time of admission.

“Disinfection will also be done at the time of discharge. Patients will not share mobile phones with anyone else during admission,” Gupta’s new order said.

The earlier order, which reached all medical institutes, had restricted patients from bringing their cell phones to isolation wards and directed medical teams to provide one or two common phones.

“Patients in Level-2 and Leve-3 Covid hospitals should not be admitted with mobile phones as it spreads infection,” the earlier order had said.

Akhilesh Yadav called Covid quarantine centres ‘torture centres’ and slammed the state government over the order. “The government wants to prevent mobile phones from sending out the truth about mismanagement and bad condition of the centres,” he said/

He tweeted: “If mobile phones spread infection, then why not ban them in the entire country? Mobile phones become mental support in loneliness. But the truth is it exposes mismanagement and bad condition of hospitals and the government does not want the truth to reach the people; that’s the reason behind the ban. The need is to sanitise mobile phones than ban them.”

The ban order also surprised health experts, who said a cell phone used exclusively by one patient can’t spread infection. “If one or two phones are used by 10 patients, it can always spread infection, no matter how many times the paramedical staff sanitise them,” said Dr PK Gupta, former president of the Indian Medical Association, Lucknow branch.

He said coronavirus means physical distance and not emotional distance from family and that cell phones help as stress-busters too.

The ban order purportedly came after some patients made videos of the problems they faced and one even gave a video interview to a foreign news agency explaining all the problems faced by her during hospital stay.