BAGALKOT: A 39-year-old bank employee, who is in an institutional quarantine, is anxiously waiting for the results of his throat swab samples for nine days. It is not only him but the other thirteen members from the same building are frightened after four people in the same building tested positive in Bagalkot.
Sudheer, a resident of Chikkaballapur and employed with a private bank in Mumbai, is married to a woman from Bagalkot. A day before the lockdown was announced, in March, his wife gave birth to a baby boy but he couldn’t make it to the home due to travelling restrictions and he also decided not to put his family’s lives at risk as Mumbai was a hotspot.
After getting approval for the interstate travel through Seva-sindhu, he came to Bagalkot on June 16. On the same day, the health authorities have put him under mandatory institutional quarantine. According to the guidelines, “those who return from Maharashtra should go into mandatory seven days institutional quarantine and seven days home quarantine.”
But, Sudheer and 13 other people are counting their 17th day in institutional quarantine, with authorities yet to set them free. Speaking to The New Indian Express, Sudheer pointed that, “The health authorities collected the throat swab on June 24. It has been nine days, I am yet to receive my reports. It is the same story of the other 13 members in the institutional quarantine."
"People are panicked and are mentally stressed as four people residing in the same building tested positive couple of days ago. People are afraid that they might get infected as there is a common toilet and bathroom. We don’t have any complaints about the food but hygiene is not being maintained. Even after two-days of people testing positive from the building, the authorities are yet to sanitize it,” said Sudheer.
Speaking to TNIE, Dr Ananth Desai, District Health Officer, pointed that, “The results are being delayed as the labs were shut for few days as couple of lab technicians in Bengaluru tested positive. Thereafter we had transported the samples to Chamarajanagar, where it was also shut as the people working in lab were infected with coronavirus. This took us five days leading to delay in getting results of the samples. Now, we are getting the samples tested in another lab in the Bengaluru, where we have received results of 600 samples on Wednesday and are expecting the results of another 400 samples on Thursday.”
“We have put them under institutional quarantine because we don’t want to put other lives at risk. We will release them from institutional quarantine as soon as we receive their medical reports. I am helpless in this issue – people have to cooperate with us in order to break the chain. We have no other intention to keep them in institutional quarantine for longer days,” stated DHO Desai.
A total of 208 cases reported in the district, where 80 are active, 123 recovered and five deceased. The district health authorities are yet to receive the results of 703 samples.