TS police continue to turn away ambulances on border

Confirmed hospital admission intimation, COVID negative certificate being demanded

Telangana police personnel checking an ambulance at the Panchalingala check-post on the inter-State border in Kurnool.

Telangana police continued to turn away all the ambulances from the Panchalingala check-post in Kurnool on the Andhra Pradesh-Telangana border despite a hue and cry raised on Monday on this issue.

The situation has not improved in any manner and the police have been asking for confirmed admission intimation from any hospital in Telangana, including Hyderabad. Tens of patients wanting to go to Hyderabad for other than COVID-19 treatment had to return home or find some other alternative hospital within Andhra Pradesh to get treated.

At the Panchalingala checkpost, when the patients arrived from various places in Kadapa, Kurnool and Anantapur districts, they were asked to furnish ‘RT-PCR Negative certificate’ and a confirmed admission appointment. The police personnel said that all the hospitals in Telangana were full and could not accommodate more people from A.P.

Bharatiya Janata Party State secretary S. Vishnu Vardhan Reddy condemned the act of the Telangana police and told

The Hindu that it was the basic human right of any person to get treated anywhere in the country. Party State official representative Duddukunta Venkateswara Reddy said there were no official instructions given to the police to stop the ambulances and it was surprising that other vehicles were being allowed, but not the ambulances with patients.