Telangana failed to control coronavirus spread, kept public in dark: HC

HYDERABAD: Telangana high court on Wednesday said that the state government had not only failed to control the spread of Covid-19 virus, but also kept people in the dark about its spread and did not implement important orders of the court.
A bench of Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice B Vijaysen Reddy told advocate general B S Prasad that on the one hand the chief secretary says that the government is following ICMR guidelines on testing and on the other the director of public health stops testing.“The ICMR never said testing should be stopped,” the chief justice said.

The bench told chief secretary Somesh Kumar and other officials to either implement its orders by July 17 or appear before it on July 20. The judges were particularly upset about their orders over giving detailed media bulletins not being followed.
Hearing a bunch of PILs filed by professor PL Visweswara Rao of Telangana Jana Samithi and others, the bench said public health director Dr G Srinivas misled the court about tests and dissemination of information to the people.
The judges directed the state to submit detailed information on tests conducted in the state along with tests done on asymptomatic and symptomatic people and whether primary contacts of positive patients were being tested as per ICMR guidelines.
The judges found fault with the authorities for failing to conduct 50,000 tests in 10 days as was promised and for unilaterally stopping them for a few days on the ground that they were unable to test the large number of samples.
26-35 age group most affected by Covid in T
You cannot stop things like this. This is contrary to ICMR guidelines,” the bench said.
“Instead of increasing tests, you are stopping the conduct of tests, the bench said, rejecting a report filed by the public health director. “Next time, let this director file a sworn affidavit along with his reports so that we can fix responsibility on such officials if they openly resort to perjury,” the bench added.
“Contrary to popular perception, young people in the 26 to 35 age group are most affected by novel coronavirus in Telangana,” the bench said, citing the health bulletin issued on June 17.
“Instead of letting people know such information so that the younger lot will come out of the misconception that only old people have to be careful, the state is resorting to suppression of such information. None of the media bulletins carry details of age, gender, area etc though we gave a detailed order on June 18 itself asking officials to reveal information to people,” the bench said.
“There is no containment policy for the state. All containment zones were closed. There is total confusion as to the areas that were most affected by the virus. Though we have directed the state, its health officials and GHMC commissioner to regularly publish details of affected people ward-wise and also share them with colony associations, the authorities ignored our direction,” the bench said.
The bench also directed both the state and central governments to furnish before the court the findings of the central team that visited Telangana recently. Advocate general BS Prasad explained to the court that the state has been scaling up its testing and other efforts in its fight against Covid-19.