A 53-year-old high-risk contact, who was quarantined in a civic-run school in Vakola, was not shifted out of the facility over 30 hours after testing positive for COVID-19.
On Friday, his 24-year-old son put out an appeal on social media urging the Brihanmumbai Municipal Coproration (BMC) to shift him to a hospital and start his treatment. Delay in shifting positive patients from quarantine centres to isolation facilities puts other people in quarantine at risk of contracting the infection. It also could lead to the emergence of new clusters of the novel coronavirus from such centres.
Neighbour succumbs
The son said their neighbour had succumbed to COVID-19 two weeks ago. He then took his father for screening at a fever camp at Government Colony in Bandra on May 12. “We live in a chawl in Bharat Nagar in Bandra. Since my father developed a cough, I took him to the camp for a check-up,” he said, adding that his father’s swab samples were collected at the camp. The doctors then advised that he be placed in a quarantine centre immediately. “They sent him to the school in Vakola in an ambulance,” the son said. The man’s reports returned positive on Thursday.
The son said he has been carrying food for his father every day. He said each floor of the school has been locked with no caretaker or volunteer around to help. “The school has a watchman, but he refuses to go upstairs. The toilets are very dirty too,” he said.
Worli MLA Aaditya Thackeray promptly responded to the son’s tweet and asked the BMC’s health committee member, Amey Ghole, to look into it.
