Ahmedabad: Policemen struggle to get tested, advised isolation

TNN | Apr 21, 2020, 09:25 IST

Representative image

AHMEDABAD: When around 25 cops of city police have already tested Covid-19 positive, many of them who remain untested in want of proper guidance by health officials may be carrying it. TOI has followed the journey of a cop from Khadia police who had to struggle even to get his medical test done to learn whether he is Covid-19 positive or not.
On Sunday, an audio clip went viral in which a doctor is heard telling a police inspector not to depend on Covid-19 testing and rather increase his immunity by taking lemons as much as he can.
TOI approached another cop from Khadia police station who had been in constant touch with six cops who had tested Covid-19 positive on Sunday. He was first asked to approach a health centre of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) in Khadia and when he went there, he was told to go to a health centre which falls in South zone of the city.
“I was told to stay in quarantine and advised to undergo test as I was in constant touch with those cops who had tested positive. I am being shunted from here to there just to give samples for Covid-19 tests. I am living with my family, and before that I had to work in field and had met many people, I do not know whoever has got infected by me, or whether I am infected myself,” said the police official after he again failed to get his test done at a health centre of AMC on Monday.
Another cop said that he was advised to stay in home quarantine but as they did not collect his samples, and said he will have to go to an urban health centre to undergo a test. “We are policemen and we are allowed to roam around in the city to maintain law and order, but it is not right given that I am a suspected Covid-19 patient and allowed to go outside just because I am not being tested at my home or at any hospital,” said the cop.