Asansol MP Babul Supriyo on Tuesday took to Twitter to share a video, allegedly shot by a suspected COVID-19 patient who is being kept in isolation at Kolkata's MR Bangur Hospital.
Supriyo shared the footage on Twitter, calling it "shocking in every sense of the term".
"Since this video is in the public domain, I would request Honourable WBCM @MamataOfficial to conduct a thorough inquiry into it and release the facts asap," Supriyo wrote.
In a followup tweet, he wondered why people would subject themselves to conditions that could get you "closer to mortality" as opposed to a cure.
"If this is true, majority believe it is, then fight against COVID-19 in India will only get harder with people running away from the most essential need of the hour - that of more testing," Supriyo pointed out.
The video in question shows what appears to be a hospital room. The person shooting the video states that this is a male isolation ward in the MR Bangur Hospital, with each bed housing a suspected COVID-19 patient.
"I am one of them...but I do not have symptoms yet," he adds.
The video pans to show a room with beds in close proximity to each other, with patients lying on some of them.
"As you can see, a dead body has been lying here for the last 2-3 hours," the person taking the video says, showing a human body covered by a sheet that is laid out on one of the beds. No arrangements have so far been made to take the deceased away, he alleges.
"In the covered area you see ahead, another dead body is being kept," he added, showing an area cordoned off with black cloth. The narrator adds that close to that on either side is a living 'patient'.
"The distance between the beds is very less...it can infect all of us," he says.
Speaking of the testing turnabout time, he adds that there does not seem to be any rapid testing going on -- as it is taking a minimum of 4-5 days.
"These people are dying before the test results come in...don't know what is happening after that. Very likely these people are COVID-19 positive -- they're all dying after facing respiratory distress," he added.
West Bengal has so far recorded 423 positive cases, with 15 deaths. 73 people have recovered.
