Lucknow: The administration in Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar district has started a manhunt to trace 17 missing patients whose samples tested positive for coronavirus in the RT-PCR test conducted at a government laboratory. Eleven employees, including laboratory staff, village surveillance committee members and the other staff posted at healthcare centres were suspended for dereliction of duty, after orders of the district health department officer.
Kushinagar’s chief medical officer (CMO) Suresh Pataria said that samples of 20 people of Ramkola, Hata and Padrauna blocks in the district tested positive in the laboratory on Saturday. The teams were assigned to trace these people for treatment, contact tracing and test others in the village.
During the probe, it was found that the cell phones of 17 people were switched off, while three samples had been collected for re-test at a laboratory at Baba Raghav Das Medical College, Gorakhpur.
It was also found that the accused health workers, who collected the samples, had mentioned the wrong residential addresses of the suspected positive patients. The teams sent by the district administration were unable to trace the suspected Covid infected patients on the addresses as mentioned in health department records.
Further probe concluded that the accused laboratory staff had destroyed the 17 positive Covid samples, whereas it’s mandatory for the lab to store samples of positive cases.
“There has been negligence in duty on part of members of the surveillance committee as well as the staff posted at the health centres in the three blocks,” he added.
CMO (Gorakhpur) Sudhakar Pandey said an alert had been sounded in the area and teams were dispatched for contact tracing.
With inputs from IANS