Rajkot: Questions were raised about health infrastructure in the ceramic city of Morbi after a video of labourers lying on the floor of a ceramic factory with intravenous drips hanging from their hands surfaced recently.
While the owner of Capson Tiles Factory, Arun Patel claims that the labourers were being treated thus as hospitals were full and doctors advised not to admit non-Covid patients. However, video shows some of the labourers, who have been made to sleep at a distance from each other, were lying on the bare floor. Two men were overseeing them. A man is seen sitting with a stock of medicine in the same factory premises where ceramic stock too is seen lying at a distance.
Patel told TOI: “These are not Covid patients. Four to five labourers complained of fever and cough two days back and were taken to a nearby private hospital. But the hospital had no space and the doctors there advised us to treat them outside the hospital as they feared they these men too may get infected with Covid in the hospital.”
Morbi collector J B Patel said, “With beds about to get full in the hospitals, we will acquire a community school and create 200 more beds. We will also acquire a polytechnic college and by Saturday, make 300 more beds available.”
Morbi has four Covid hospitals with total 200 beds capacity, of which more than 180 are already filled. Morbi civil hospital, sub district hospital Wankaner, Halvad and a private hospital are treating Covid patients currently.