People refrain from reporting symptoms, fear visiting quarantine centres

Pradip Chatterjee | MP | 6 May 2020 | Kolkata: COVID-19 pandemic has become a litmus test for the health administration, doctors and frontline workers as people are refraining from reporting their symptoms to health workers or doctors because they fear to go to an institutional quarantine. 

While the health workers and other agencies of the state government, who have been ceaselessly working to put-up-a-fight against the stigma attached to the disease and wrong notions centered around it, peoples' reluctancy to report have posed a serious challenge before the state government in terms of early detection, particularly in some pockets. 

Sources in the health department said that some of the potentially COVID-19 suspects in the containment zones, more specifically in the slums of North Kolkata and the adjoining areas, were found reluctant to report their symptoms to health workers only to avoid institutional quarantine or hospitalisation in the early stages. 

People are under the belief that they would be taken to some 'unknown destination' by the people clad in white personal protective equipment (PPE) if they reveal their symptoms because they have developed a kind of fear relating to the quarantine centers. It has not only complicated the situation but also created great difficulties for the government to address the crisis properly due to the lack of awareness and fear about the disease among a section of people. 

Recently, the number of COVID-19 cases has gone and it is suspected that in the initial stages, identified people with suspected symptoms had been much less compared to the present figure. There had been a spur in the institutional quarantine in the state in the recent past after the health department workers and the staff members from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) carried out comprehensive campaigns in all the pockets where people are much affected. 

The health workers both from the civic body and health department have started door-stepping the people in the containment zones and making a survey on each household and decided to conduct swab tests of suspected patients at the spots, particularly in the containment zones. 

According to sources, presently, the health department is keen on setting up more quarantine centers across the state and five new areas have been identified so far. 

"Steps have been taken to visit every household to find out all the suspected patients in the crowded and slum areas and it would be ensured that the suspected ones can be sent for institutional quarantine mandatorily. It would be a virtual combing operation in the infected areas of the city and the districts. 

A new quarantine center will be set up in Rajarhat to accommodate more suspected patients," a senior health department official said. 

(Courtesy, Source- http://www.millenniumpost.in/kolkata/people-refrain-from-reporting-symptoms-fear-visiting-quarantine-centres-408402 )