Amid allegations of poor handling of the Covid-19 situation in Bihar by the Nitish Kumar dispensation, the Centre has rushed a team to the State to access his Government’s coronavirus preparedness amid the pandemic.
The visit by the three-member team, led by Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal, comes in the wake of several videos doing the rounds on social media wherein people are complaining about inadequate facilities and negligence at State-run hospitals. The director of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr S K Singh, and Associate Professor of Medicine, AIIMS, New Delhi, Dr Neeraj Nishchal are also part of the team.
The team will hold meetings with authorities of the health department and other officials concerned to discuss ways to contain the spread of the disease, said an official from the Union Health Ministry.
In Katihar, a patient reportedly died at a hospital after the hospital staff failed to provide him with an oxygen cylinder.
RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav — who has been attacking Nitish Kumar over the handling of the crisis — today shared a video of people complaining about the lack of doctors and nurses at a hospital in Siwan. A woman is seen lying unattended at a hospital bed as her attendants call for help.
“There is no doctor to attend to us. They just came, gave injection and left,” a voice in the background is heard saying in the video. Almost all the beds in the ward were empty.
Bihar has witnessed a 2.5 times rise in Covid-19 cases since July 1 when the case count was 10,075. So far, the State has reported nearly 30,000 coronavirus cases.
The recovery rate in the state has also dropped to 63.17 per cent on July 19 from 77.52 per cent on July 1.
In the wake of a surge in Covid-19 cases, the State Government on July 16 imposed a complete lockdown till July 31.