Concerns over 'missing' Covid-positive people

Thousands are ducking the BBMP’s tracking mechanism

Covid-positive patients slipping under the radar is a headache for the authorities.

Last week, Revenue Minister R Ashoka said 2,000 to 3,000 Covid-positive patients from Bengaluru were untraceable.

Director General and Inspector General of Police Praveen Sood tweeted that they would be tracked down and booked under the Disaster Management Act.

“This is a number accumulated over months. Most of them are not even positive currently,” he told Metrolife.

According to the BBMP Covid bulletin, 22 positive people were untraceable in the week from April 22 to 28. The data from the week before shows 12 people were untraceable.

The numbers are higher, say workers on the ground. Lokesh Poovappa, a volunteer at a primary healthcare centre in Anjanapura ward in Bommanahalli says in the past two weeks 122 people have tested positive, and of them, 30 to 40 are ‘missing’. “Many have their phones switched off,” he says.

He says some of those missing are contract labourers or daily wagers. “When we go to the apartments where they were working, the contractors say they have moved on to another location,” he explains.

A contributing factor to the growing list of ‘missing’ persons is the delay in getting results to an RT-PCR test. “A lot of people tend to go back to their hometowns before the results come out. This renders them untraceable,” Lokesh says.

More worryingly, he says, they are spreading the virus wherever they go. “If we can’t get hold of them, we are can't trace their contacts either,” he says.

What do the police do?

Praveen Sood, DGP and IGP, says that 90 per cent of all Covid patients are traceable. “Only a small number are trying to escape the authorities. Many don’t pick up calls because of stress or sickness or because they are in hospital. They pick up after a day or two and we understand their situation,” he says.The police concentrate on those wilfully absconding. “This includes asymptomatic people who think it’s no big deal and continue to roam the streets. We teach them using a technical matrix whose details I can’t disclose,” he says. Sood was unable to give numbers of Covid-positive people tracked down. “It’s a decentralised system so I don’t have statistics,” he says.

More telecallers

Akash (name changed), a swab collector with the BBMP, says that there were 20-30 cases per day per PHC in the first wave but that number has now increased to 100. “The number of staff at the PHCs has either remained the same or decreased slightly which has lead to an overburdening of the system,” he says. The BBMP says it has increased the number of telecallers in all wards in the past week. “All patients are being called and tracked by them and the state war room,” says BBMP Chief Health Officer Dr B K Vijendra. He says volunteers call a person seven to eight times. “If they don’t respond, their details are handed over to the police for tracking,” he explains.

Why they are untraceable

They don’t pick up phone calls.

They give incomplete or wrong addresses.

They are sick or hospitalised.

They have gone back to their native places.

They are afraid of hospitalisation.