Coimbatore: Only nine out of the 2,577-odd
Covid-19 patients in the district came forward to cast their vote on Tuesday, despite the Election Commission allotting an exclusive hour for them.
While seven patients from the Covid care centre at Karunya University in Madhampalayam cast their votes in two booths — a government high school and primary school in S S Kulam — two from city-based KG Hospital exercised their franchise at Peelamedu.
The patients from KG Hospital arrived at the booth in plainclothes and changed into PPE kits and wore masks in the ambulance before stepping into the polling station. The entire process took only a few minutes and was simple, a hospital spokesperson said.
The seven patients from the Covid care centre were wary of the stigma associated with the virus and refused to wear PPE kits and even refused to be photographed for documentation purposes. This forced polling officers in S S Kulam polling booth to protect themselves by wearing PPE kits.
Despite providing concessions to the patients, including offering to pick them up and drop them back in ambulances, most of them refused to come out and vote. Even the 70-odd patients in home isolation within the corporation limits refused to step out. This despite health officers calling them a day earlier and on Tuesday to motivate them.
“As some patients were wary of using ambulance, we allowed home isolation patients to come in their own vehicles to the booths and offered to escort them into a separate room to vote,” said city health officer Dr S Raja. “We called more than 40 patients on Monday and Tuesday to motivate them. But none were willing.”
Even mildly symptomatic patients in private and government hospitals refused to vote. “None of them were ready to vote because of issues like their polling booths being too far away or them becoming too tired to vote,” said an official from Royal Care Hospital.
Meanwhile, 281 people tested positive for the virus on Tuesday, taking the total number of cases to 60,821. With 145 people getting discharged, the number of active cases rose to 2,577. There was also one death due to the virus, taking the toll to 695.