NEW DELHI, Apr 14: A retired army man suffering from COVID died outside a government hospital in Bihar reportedly because the hospital authorities kept him waiting as they were “busy” with the visit of the health minister Mangal Pandey.
The ex-soldier Vinod Singh died in the vehicle in which he was brought to the Nalanda Medical College and Hospital. The authorities did not admit him despite his family’s repeated requests, his son Abhimanyu Kumar said.
“My father was COVID positive. Other hospitals refused to admit him, NMCH hospital agreed. But they made us wait outside for one-and-a-half hours,” Kumar said.
A resident of Lakhisarai, about 120 kilometres from Patna, Vinod Singh, was referred to the state capital hospital after testing positive for Covid a few days ago.
Kumar said they brought him to Patna on Monday evening and took him to the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences. But the doctors there refused to admit him as there were no beds available. So he was taken to a private nursing home, where he was admitted for a few hours.
Around 10 am on Tuesday, they went to the Nalanda Medical College. But at the hospital, everyone was busy with the proposed inspection by the health minister.
Asked to comment on the callousness of doctors and the hospital staff, Pandey said he felt sorry after knowing about the incident. “We try our best to provide medical care to all and we feel very sorry whenever someone dies like this,” he said.
Over the last 24 hours, Bihar has logged more than 4000 fresh infections, pushing up the total to over 41,000. Currently there are around 25,000 active cases.
Meanwhile, in Mumbai the panicked migrant labourers fearing a repetition of the last year when they had to walk for miles, have thronged the railway stations for catching long-distance trains to their home states despite repeated assurances from the railway authorities that the trains would not be suspended.
A chaotic situation was created outside the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus as several thousand migrants with women and children on their toes gathered to board trains on Wednesday as the fortnight long “severe restrictions” bordering to “near-lockdown’ schedule to begin from 8 PM.
The Central Railway (CR) appealed to people not to panic and avoid crowding the stations.
The Railway Protection Force and the Government Railway Police have deployed additional force outside the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) to control the crowd.
Reeling under an unprecedented COVID-19 wave, the Maharashtra government on Tuesday announced severe restrictions on public movement over the next 15 days across the state.
The restrictions, which exclude essential services, will come into effect from 8 pm on Wednesday and remain in force till 7 am on May 1.
“Section 144 of the CrPC, prohibiting assembly of five or more people at one spot, will be in force during the period,” Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said.
A railway spokesman said “People should not panic and avoid crowding the stations.” He said only passengers with confirmed tickets would be allowed inside the railway stations and permitted to board the special trains. He said the Central Railway was constantly monitoring the waiting lists of trains to check if there was demand rising for particular destinations.
(Manas Dasgupta)