Patients’ family put in home isolation, villagers protest

GREATER NOIDA: Residents of Bisada village in Greater Noida were up in arms on Saturday night after a health department team allowed a few family members of three Covid patients to remain in home isolation.
The protesters said they feared the family members, too, could be Covid carriers and other villagers might come in contact with them. They gathered around an ambulance, which was carrying the team of two doctors and a pharmacist from the Dadri community health centre, and refused to let it leave the area.
Hariom, whose wife Kaushalya Devi is the village pradhan, said it was around 10pm when the health department team arrived to check on the patients’ family. An Oppo employee, his father and sister have tested positive from that house.
“The villagers were anyway scared that they, too, might contract the infection. Even after 24 hours since they tested positive, the authorities hadn’t bothered to even seal the area in the vicinity. The villagers demanded that all seven members of their family be sent to a quarantine centre,” he said.
What added to the anxiety of the villagers was that the Oppo employee’s mother had fainted after hearing that her son, husband and daughter had tested positive for Covid. Though she did not have any virus-like symptoms, neighbours feared she, too, might be ill from the infection.
“According to the latest ICMR guidelines, if the contacts of a Covid patient are asymptomatic, they should be asked to remain in home quarantine. However, since the woman fainted at home, it sent out a signal among the villagers that she might be infected, too. We were ready to take the woman to a quarantine centre as the villagers were anxious,” a health official said.
The villagers’ anxiety was not unfounded as there have been instances of people roaming on the streets despite being asked to stay in home isolation, the latest of such cases being reported in Cholas. The protest started when the health department team decided against taking five children of the family to a quarantine centre. “There is a risk of infection among children at quarantine centres,” the official said.
The villager didn’t let the ambulance leave until all the family members were taken away. The team relented and took all the other family members to a quarantine centre at Galgotias University.
SDM (Dadri) Rajiv Rai said the village would be sealed by Sunday night in keeping with guidelines for containment zones.