Mumbai: On April 9, the Pune administration sent 425 people, who had high-risk contacts with
Covid-infected persons, to Pune’s
Sassoon Hospital to be tested for corona virus. A few hours later, the hospital refused to test them claiming that “they were not informed” and sent them back home. When the Pune administration came to know of it a blame game started between the hospital and the administration.
Though
Maharashtra and Kerala started getting the first cases in the country, the situation has worsened in Maharashtra as it now has the highest number of cases, the highest number of fatalities, and every second death occurring in India due to the virus is being reported from here. Kerala, on the other hand, has not only brought down the number of new cases to single digits, but has reduced the mortality rate to two people. The Pune Sassoon incident is an example of how Maharashtra has simply floundered in handling this pandemic. Several officials that ET spoke to said lack of foresight and co-ordination has resulted in the state still grappling with the pandemic.
ET repeatedly tried to get in touch with Maharashtra Health Minister
Rajesh Tope. He was, however, not available for comment. “We started off on the wrong footing. Unlike Kerala, we started testing late. Kerala began testing in January itself at its airports and they aggressively practised home quarantine even for those who came from the Middle East countries, even before the Gulf countries were not included in the initial list of countries that needed compulsory quarantine,” an official said.
Maharashtra was aware that people from the Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE were coming to the country and posed a health risk. State minister Rajesh Tope kept asking the Centre to include people coming from these countries in the list of people to be compulsory quarantined. While the Centre kept dragging its feet, the Maharashtra government too did not take any steps to compulsorily quarantine these people.
Kerala officials, on the other hand, were more proactive. “We had already formed teams in every panchayat –– comprising a medical officer, a police official, a member of the local panchayat,” said Renu Raj (IAS), staff officer to the Kerala chief secretary.
Maharashtra, on the other hand, did not form any teams to keep a watch on these people.