The Bombay HC bench at Nagpur last week directed the Collector of Nagpur, Commissioner of Nagpur Municipal Corporation and other heads to “prepare proposals for installing CCTV cameras in the corridors of all institutional quarantine centres” and where the corridors are not available, at suitable places, for having “electronic surveillance” in order to keep an eye of the movements of the quarantined patients in and out of the room at the State’s expenses. The court gave a time of 10 days from the passing of the order for sending names to the State or Central Government and to place the copy of the proposal on record.
The direction came by a division by a division bench comprising of justice Sunil B Shukre and Justice Avinash G Gharote while handling a suo moto PIL registered by the court last year.
Court-appointed Nagpur Covid-19 Committee was convened on 7th April 2021 and serious deliberations were done due to the “emergency situation arising out of the explosion of COVID-19 pandemic at Nagpur.” In view of this, the Committee has given multiple informative insights to the Court which were in turn appreciated by the High Court.”
Decisions Taken by the Nagpur Covid-19 Committee for Pandemic Situation:
- Procedure for Setting up Covid Hospital at Nagpur
The Committee resolved that the applications received that the applications received by Nagpur Municipal Corporation for setting up covid hospitals shall be processed within 24 hours.
- Procedure to Undergo for Covid testing at Nagpur
The committee also decided that the testing will be bifurcated into two types;
One would be the antigen test and the second, the RT-CPR test.
If the antigen test is negative, the person will be required to undergo the RT-PCR test.
This was applauded by the court as whenever the antigen test results in positive, then the RT-PCR test will surely be positive, but this is not the case with a negative antigen test, so to ensure double safety, this decision was made.
- Mechanism for Boosting health workers morale
In order to boost the morale of health workers. The Committee decided to explore the mechanism by involving NGO’s and social workers.
- Ensuring Mobilization of People taking Covid Vaccination
The Committee had made a request to the court for ensuring the needful guideline for social distancing.
- Teams Created for Monitoring Admitting patients at Private hospitals
The court states that such a step is essential in the present-day scenario where the inflow of patients is very high and the outflow is low.
- Installation of CCTV cameras in order to monitor the movements of Covid Patients at Nagpur
The court directs that CCTV cameras be installed in the corridors of all institutional quarantine centres, for checking the movements of quarantined patients.
The case will now be heard by the court on 20th April 2021.
