Hyderabad: Telangana HC on Wednesday said that the state administration had not only failed to control the spread of CoronaVirus, but also kept people in the dark about its spread and did not implement important orders of the court.
A bench of Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice B Vijaysen Reddy told advocate general BS Prasad that on the one hand, the chief secretary says that the government is following ICMR regulations on testing and on the other, the director of public health stops testing. “The ICMR never said testing should be halted,” the chief justice said.
The bench told chief secretary Somesh Kumar and other officials to either implement its orders by July 17 or appear before it on July 20. The judges were especially upset about their orders over giving detailed media bulletins not being followed.
The judges directed the state to submit more detailed information about the tests carried out in the state along with tests done on asymptomatic and symptomatic people and whether primary contacts of positive patients were being tested as per ICMR guidelines.
The judges found a mistake with the competent authorities for failing to conduct 50,000 tests in 10 days as was agreed and for a unilateral basis stopping them for a few days on the ground that they were unable to test the large number of samples.
“Contrary to popular perception, young people in the 26 to 35 age group are most affected by a novel coronavirus in Telangana,” the bench said, citing the health bulletin issued on June 17.
“Instead of letting people know such information so that the younger lot will come out of the misconception that only old people have to be careful, the state is resorting to suppression of such information. None of the media bulletins carry details of age, gender, area, etc. though we gave a detailed order on June 18 itself asking officials to reveal information to people,” the bench said.
“There is no containment policy for the state. All containment zones were closed. There is total confusion as to the areas that were most affected by the virus. Though we have directed the state, its health officials, and GHMC commissioner to regularly publish details of affected people ward-wise and share them with colony associations, the authorities ignored our direction,” the bench said.
The bench also directed both the state and central governments to furnish before the court the findings of the central team that visited Telangana recently. Advocate general BS Prasad explained to the court that the state has been scaling up its testing and other efforts in its fight against CoronaVirus.