Wrong contact information makes tracing uphill task

IN HARYANA Officials, especially in NCR districts, deal with misleading personal details

Haryana’s health department is facing a new challenge: incorrect details furnished by patients.

Officials, especially in NCR districts of Gurugram, Faridabad, Rohtak and Sonepat, are dealing with inaccurate and misleading personal details such as phone numbers, names and addresses provided by patients who appear for Covid-19 tests.

Rohtak civil surgeon Dr Anil Birla said, “We have provided a list of five untraceable patients to local police and they are making efforts to find them. Every day, we see four to five reports where initial details for verification are missing. Most of the patients give wrong contact information. Now, we have asked the testing employees to verify the contact number and address of all people appearing for the Covid-19 test.”

Sharing his experience with such patients, he said a doctor couple from Delhi had appeared for Covid-19 test last month and was found infected.

“They claimed that they hailed from Rohtak. After their report arrived, we called on their number, but it was invalid. Then we contacted the Indian Medical Association and enquired whether they were registered with them or not. The medical body shared their address which was in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar. We

informed the Delhi health department, following which they were hospitalised and their area was declared as a containment zone,” Birla said.

Sonepat civil surgeon Dr BK Rajoura also raised similar concerns. He said they had been witnessing at least 10 such cases on a daily basis.

A health department official, who didn’t want to be named, said across the state, there were over 2,500 corona patients who

had given wrong information and many of them were yet to be traced.

Dr Ramesh Punia, a biologist who is also Covid-19 quarantine in-charge in Hisar, said they trailed at least 150 people who had attended a wedding in Hisar last month after the groom’s father tested positive for Covid-19.

“We managed to trace the guests with the help of the wedding photographer. Nearly 20 of

them were found infected. In another case, a Hisar-based youth, who had tested positive, gave the wrong number and address. We had to track him on Facebook and contact his online friends before we could find him in person,” Punia added.

In another case, Hisar health officials had to scan footage of 200 CCTV cameras to trace a 20-yearold shopkeeper, who had given lift to an infected transport company worker.