Sj Desk
Mamta Banerjee expressed her displeasure after a youth with a travel history to London defied instructions by officials to get himself admitted to a hospital as a precautionary measure.
On Wednesday, Banerjee ordered a compulsory quarantine of those returning from overseas and warned of consequences for ignoring protocol. This came after an 18-year-old man continued to travel to places, risking others in the process, despite clear instructions of quarantine. The chief minister said that the incident was “an eye opener.”
While talking at a government event she said, “He was asked to stay in isolation at home but I heard he kept travelling to places. This disease spreads with contact. Such negligence is unacceptable."
“Each and everybody, irrespective of being a VIP or not, needs to maintain self-isolation for 15 to 27 days after returning from abroad. Nothing can be worse than a person having the symptoms of the disease moving around and meeting people,” she said.
The identified youth became the first COVID-19 case of West Bengal. He had returned to India from London on Sunday morning. While showed no symptoms during the thermal screening at the airport, he was advised to get himself admitted to the state’s nodal hospital for the novel virus.
His mother is a senior bureaucrat at the state secretariat. After coming in direct contact with him, she went about her usual duties for an entire now. She is currently admitted at the isolation ward of Beleghata ID hospital along with her husband, their driver and two others.
The bureaucrat's office has been sealed and the administration is on the mammoth task of tracking down every person that the woman and her son came in contact with. Every room that the bureaucrat entered was fumigated on Wednesday.
“You return from abroad and go to visit a shopping mall or a park and spread the infection to others is just not acceptable. You do it because someone in my family is an influential person. No, I don’t support this,” Banerjee said without referring to the Covid-19 patient.
