State must conduct fire audit of all hosps: Fadnavis

Nagpur: Expressing deep anguish over repeated fire incidents in various parts of the state leading to killing of Covid-19 patients, leader of opposition Devendra Fadnavis on Friday demanded that the Maharashtra government must conduct an audit of all hospitals to prevent such tragedies.
“Already the citizens are in grip of fear due to Covid-19 pandemic. Incidents like the fire in Virar hospital that was treating coronavirus patients add to their woes. The continuity of all such incidents like in Bhandara, Mumbai, Nashik, Nagpur and now in Virar, where patients have lost their lives, is shocking. After every such tragic incident, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray’s office and respective district administration simply ordered inquiry, but did nothing to prevent them,” he said.
Speaking on the city’s situation, the Southwest Nagpur MLA said Covid-19 patients were multiplying and even deaths were increasing with every passing day. “We need more oxygenated beds and medicines like Reemdesvir. Fortunately, the centre’s oxygen express would be supplying two tankers of the gas brought from Visakhapatnam for the city. Union minister Nitin Gadkari and I are also working to improve the precarious situation and help the patients. We’re daily conducting 30,000 RT-PCR and antigen tests. But in Mumbai, only 35,000-45,000 tests are being held for such a big population. It means they’re suppressing the patients’ numbers, due to which the situation would explode in future,” he said.
On arrest of police inspector Sunil Mane by Mumbai police in connection with Antilia bomb scare case, the former CM said NIA was doing its inquiry and everything would come out soon.
The former CM added that the government must devise some mechanism to check all hospitals across the state and help them to set up safety measures. “The administration should now take care of the remaining patients of Virar hospital immediately and must go to the roots of inquiry to punish the guilty. We’re aware that the government is fighting against the deadly virus, but it needs to find a long-term solution instead of a knee-jerk reaction to avoid loss of precious lives due to such fire incidents.”
Taking a dig at three coalition partners in Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, Fadnavis said some leaders were doing nothing to stop the pandemic or improve the collapsing health infrastructure except interacting with the media and censuring the BJP-led central government.
“On one hand, the centre has increased Remdesvir injection quota for Maharashtra, but on the other, MVA leaders continue to play politics. The medicine is distributed considering the ratio of oxygenated beds. But the focus of our ministers is not the deadly virus but facing the camera and providing some wrong statistics,” he added.