Bedlam as patients refuse to travel in crowded ambulance

NEWDELHI: The government’s new guidelines that every new Covid-19 patient be taken to a Covid Care Centre (CCC), to assess if they need home isolation or hospitalisation, triggered chaos at Vasant Kunj’s B-1 block containment zone on Tuesday night as at least 15 patients refused to visit a CCC at YMCA near Connaught Place, locals and police said.

The patients were reluctant to travel together in the ambulance arranged by the district administration, saying they were afraid of contracting a “heavier viral load from other infected persons”. Many demanded that they should be allowed to remain in home isolation or permitted to hire a private ambulance if their visit to the CCC was mandatory, senior police officers privy to the development said.

Doctors, however, refuted the residents’ claim that they might contract a more virulent strain by travelling with other infected persons. “If two Covid positive patients were in close proximity with each other, it will not influence the disease pattern. If the virus is inside a body, then the severity of symptoms will depend on the affected individual’s response to the disease. Mild symptomatic cases will not turn severe merely by coming in contact with a severely symptomatic patient,” Dr Srikant Sharma, senior consultant, medicine, Moolchand Hospital, said.