New Delhi: The Union Home Ministry on Friday rushed five more central teams to Gujarat, Telangana and Tamil Nadu following reports of major lockdown violations coming from five different places of these states.
"Incidents ranging from violence on frontline health workers and police personnel, violations of social distancing norms, opposition in setting up quarantine centres are coming from these states," said a senior Home Ministry official.
The inter-ministerial central team (IMCT) will make an on-spot assessment of the situation, issue necessary directions to the state authorities for its redressal and submit their report to the central government as soon as possible.
"Situation is serious in major hotspots districts or emerging hotspots like Ahmedabad and Surat (Gujarat), Thane (Maharastra), Hyderabad (Telangana) and Chennai (Tamil Nadu)," the official said.
The central team has been assigned to focus on ranges of issues including compliance and implementation of lockdown measures as per guidelines, the supply of essential commodities, social distancing, the preparedness of the health infrastructure, safety of health professional, and condition of relief camps for labour and poor people.
The Home Ministry has earlier set up two central teams for seven different places in West Bengal, one central team each for Indore, Mumbai, Pune, and Jaipur.
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"The team from Indore and Mumbai have submitted their report to the Home Ministry. The team has reported about 171 existing containment zones in Indore pit of which 20 are critical," said Puniya Salila Srivastava, joint secretary in the Home Ministry.
She said that the central team has advised the Maharastra government to set up location-wise portable toilets.
"People in Dharavi are quarantined through home isolation. The team has suggested for institutional quarantine centre for 2000 to 3000 people in Dharavi," said Srivastava.
Meanwhile, the central team assigned for West Bengal has informed the Home Ministry that the state government has set up a committee of doctors to declare the cause of death for Covid19 patients.
Quoting state government officials, the central team in its report said that if a COVID patient dies in a road accident, he can't be said to have died of COVID. The central team has asked clarification from the state government on the case records of all COVID patients where the cause of death is attributed to some other cause by the committee.
Raising questions on the existence of such a committee, the central team has asked the state government whether such a committee is in line with ICMR guidelines or medical practice.
In a report sent to Union Home Secretary, Ajay Kumar Bhalla, the central team headed by Apurva Chandra, additional secretary to the government of India, said that state government had facilitated a visit of the team to CNCI and Bangur dedicated COVID hospitals.
Following the visit, the central team has observed that there was a large number of patients waiting for their COVID tests results for more than five days.
The team has found that there were no social distancing norms followed in Bangur hospital. There are only 12 ventilator beds available in Bangur hospital even though the hospital caters to 354 serious COVID patients.
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