Srinagar: Rabiya Jan (name changed) along with her two friends landed at Srinagar Airport last week. After experiencing a distressing time at the airport, waiting to be screened, Rabiya said they were taken in a vehicle packed with other passengers who had travelled overseas.
“We were told that we will be quarantined at an isolation facility although I did not have flu-like symptoms. The vehicle packed with many other students who came from different countries were put inside quarantine facility at Haj House Bemina, where 21 girl students were jam-packed in a single room,” said Rabiya.
Adding there are no facilities in the quarantine center. “Even no WiFi and television which could have kill our boredom,” the 22-year-old told Kashmir News Trust over the phone. The unhygienic or inhospitable conditions of rest of quarantine centers in Kashmir soon became viral on social media sites as people shot videos and started uploading them to highlight the collective plight. “We are more than 12 people packed in single room without hygienic washrooms. They want us to stay sanitised and this is what they give us.. This way Kashmir cannot contain coronavirus, only will get more cases,” many people wrote on social media.
A doctor from Srinagar wishing anonymity for departmental reasons said: “If the current crisis passes us by we may be saved a catastrophe. But if it hits Jammu and Kashmir, the way it is playing out in Italy, Spain and China and there is a surge of patients seeking care in public hospitals, it could be an unprecedented disaster.”
According to a report, at a time when the world grapples with the coronavirus, people in most countries are turning to their governments and public healthcare systems to battle the pandemic. In India, however, the situation is different. With a public healthcare system that is in a shambles, many Indians are looking with suspicion at the state’s efforts to battle the Covid-19 disease, creating complications for health authorities to grapple with.
Even on Thursday a woman, who had returned from Europe last week and admitted to a hospital in Srinagar with symptoms for coronavirus, left the facility for home after stray dogs entered her ward, her family, refuting the administration’s claim that she had escaped.
“The claims of the administration that they had tracked her are nothing but lies. We had to take her out of the Chest Disease Hospital at Dalgate at 3 am as there were stray dogs in the ward where she was admitted,” a relative of the woman told a news agency.
The relative said the woman called home around 2.30 am on Wednesday night, saying she was scared as several stray dogs had entered the ward. The administration on the other hand claims that more than 150 persons, accused of hiding travel history, have been traced and admitted to various quarantine facilities. So far 13 persons- ten in Kashmir and three in Jammu have so far tested positive for the new disease, prompting the authorities to impose prohibitory orders on the movement of people in the newly carved Jammu and Kashmir. (KNT)
