Despite the tall claims made by the administration and their political bosses the situation seems to be getting worse by the day in Ujjain.
The latest case of botch up pertains to a 62-year-old man, whose death occurred at RD Gardi Medical College (RDGMC) on May 9.
The authorities and the medicos concerned declared the results of his first sample report as negative, but after his funeral the cause of death was attributed to Covid-19.
To make the matter worse two family members of the deceased including a little girl and her mother have now tested positive for Covid-19.
The only mistake that the kin of the deceased committed was that they carried out his last rites going by the first sample report and ended up becoming Covid-19 patients.
Hence, a person who died of coronavirus infection was, on records, corona-negative at the time of his funeral. The second report came after the funeral of the deceased which confirmed that he died due to coronavirus.
This shows that neither the RDGMC management nor the senior administrative officials are serious about the Covid-19 outbreak in the district.
Allegations pertaining to the lapses and carelessness against this highly controversial hospital abound where more than 25 patients have died since April 3.
This leads us to question as to why did the administration permitted the protocol of a non-corona death, in this case of a Corona-death. The answer is because the first report of the deceased was Corona-negative.
However, the administration overlooked two very important facts: First, the deceased was kept on ventilator for last 2-3 days before his death as his symptoms were very similar to Covid-19 infection.
Secondly, the administration gave a go ahead to the normal funeral of the deceased without waiting for the second report.
The wisdom guiding the practice of carrying out two tests is that there is always a probability that one report may erroneously show the patient or the deceased as corona-negative.
These two points which the administration overlooked strongly implicates it in the whole botch up that led to exposure of 20 persons who participated in the funeral.
Whereas the protocol allows that only 5 persons are allowed to perform the funeral of a person who dies of corona infection
The intensity of exposure got increased multifold because the body of the deceased was permitted to be taken out from the body-bag before funeral, for last rites.
Now, 15 innocent persons, their kin and everyone in their contact history had been exposed to the dreaded virus due to one silly mistake of the administration that the deceased persons were not being segregated into three categories, instead of two.
Categories being: Corona-deaths, the second category is of the non-corona deaths. The missing category being that of “Doubtful-Corona-Deaths”.
When Free Press approached Dr Sudhakar Vaidya, who treated the deceased-in-question, he admitted that the first report communicated to his family members was that he has tested negative, but second one was positive.
It is learnt that both samples were examined and reported by the RDGMC. Dr Vaidya also pleaded that he cannot do anything in such cases which throw up two contradictory reports.
A relative of the deceased said, “The administration could avoid such unfortunate developments by including category of doubtful deaths into its protocol. This way immediate family members of the deceased and their subsequent contacts can be saved from Covid-19 exposure.”
