NMC medical teams earn Mundhe and citizens’ wrath despite non-stop work

Nagpur: Despite working tirelessly for the last four months, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC)’s medical teams have received only brickbats. After TOI’s report highlighting the overburdened zone officials’ plight, civic chief Tukaram Mundhe — through the chief medical officer (CMO) — surprisingly issued them show-cause notices, seeking explanation for non-compliance of 1x20 Covid contact tracing directives, among other issues.
Mundhe and CMO Dr Yogendra Sawai didn’t respond to TOI’s queries regarding their plan to trace 20 close contacts of each Covid patient, and data on how many have so far been traced. Earlier queries too went unanswered.
On Saturday afternoon, Mundhe and Dr Sawai summoned all zone officials to NMC headquarters and allegedly pulled them up over the rising Covid death rate. “They emphasized on early detection and early referral to prevent more fatalities,” officials said.
NMC sources said detection and referral are not happening effectively because many are preferring private clinics and hospitals. “We are unable to locate such patients,” officials said.
At the same time, the administration assured to provide more manpower to achieve their target.
NMC officials said that while they were giving it their all, some of them could only manage to trace six to eight close contacts of each positive patient since August 1. This, they said, was done being at the receiving end of citizens' anger. “In several cases, the entire family is positive. So if there are five members, how are we going to locate 100 contacts based on 20 against each,” asked officials.
“Our phone starts ringing from 6am. People call us to tell there is a positive in their area, someone is not following home isolation, or there is a suspected death," they said.
Though the NMC is running call centres for citizens's query and complaints, the clueless representatives manning them have found an easy escape by sharing zone officials’ cell numbers. “The entire day, we keep fielding phone calls from irate residents. Law and order is not our subject. But people are not ready to understand and keep arguing or calling back,” they said .
Officials added that they were perplexed by the top officers not giving them any plausible reason for tracing 20 suspects. “The validity period of this measure is not defined either. If we take seven days to reach the last Covid suspect in the line, will he or she remains a suspect,” they asked.
“This is nothing but mental harassment. Instead of showing us the path to achieve their objectives, the authorities are serving us show-cause notice,” they said.
In the show-cause notice, the zone officials have been asked to explain how rapid antigen tests have been done on symptomatic high risk, comorbid and close contacts. They have also been asked about zone-wise list of number of people testing positive at testing centres, list of home isolated persons and inspection of private hospitals, among other issues.
TOI also called up some of the zonal medical officials (ZMOs) and rapid response team (RRT) members. They claimed to have been tracing “many” close contacts as per the civic chief directives. When asked about the total number of suspects found, they disconnected the call.
In some zones, citizens complained that the zone officials didn’t answer their calls the first time, and that they had to keep trying repeatedly.
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