Government gets notice, to reply by next week
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has issued notice to the Centre for reply by next week on a petition by a doctor questioning the health ministry move ending the 14-day mandatory quarantine of the frontline COVID-19 healthcare workers through an advisory for managing healthcare professionals working in COVID and non-COVID areas of the hospitals.
A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, SK Kaul and MR Shah on Thursday took on record the affidavit of Dr Arushi Jain in her pending petition and sought reply from Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre. It also allowed application for permission to file additional documents.
The affidavit, filed through advocate Mithu Jain and Arjun Syal, said the May 15 advisory issued by by the Directorate General of Health Services, Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, prescribes the standard operating procedure (SOP), including and quarantine and accommodation facility, only to the healthcare workers “only in case of high exposure to COVID-19 patients and in case of the healthcare workers showing symptoms of COVID-19,” and not to quarantine other healthcare workers.
It said several doctor associations have already written to the ministry, opposing this advisory as “the obligation of hospitals/ concerned government to provide quarantine facility/ accommodation to other healthcare personnel has been dispensed with, and the healthcare workers have been now deprived of the same quarantine facilities given to others on the basis of some irrational mechanism, who are equally fighting a tireless war to save the spread of virus,” the affidavit said.
On the basis of the Centre’s advisory, the affidavit said the Karnataka government on May 16 issued a circular that the healthcare workers who are asymptomatic need not be institutionally quarantined as they are advised to merely monitor their temperature and absence of symptoms each da before starting their duties in hospital.”
On May 15, the top court had asked the Centre on Dr Jain’s petition to apprise it of steps taken to quarantine doctors and medical staff engaged in fight against coronavirus in accommodations near the hospitals itself.
source https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/supreme-court-raises-questions
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