Representative image: Security personnel on guard on J&K National Highway, March 27, 2020. Photo: PTI.
Srinagar: The government functioning in J&K has been badly hit after a senior bureaucrat tested positive for COVID-19, forcing a number of top-ranking administrators and senior health officials to go into quarantine.
While the government rushed to order a “deep sanitisation” of the civil secretariat, the highest seat of governance, health authorities in Jammu are working overtime to trace the contacts of the infected bureaucrat, Dheeraj Gupta.
“There is panic within the ranks of administration,” a senior health official from Jammu, who opted for home quarantine after interacting with the bureaucrat, said. “Right now, the entire focus is on tracing his contacts.”
The late night report
Dheeraj Gupta is the principal secretary of the housing and urban development department. He tested positive for the novel coronavirus after he attended a high-level meeting chaired by J&K chief secretary B.V.R. Subrahmanyam. Gupta is in charge of arrangements at the Srinagar airport for passengers returning to the Kashmir Valley from outside J&K.
On Saturday, he flew to Jammu for the meeting at the civil secretariat. An official said his samples were taken for COVID-19 tests at the Jammu airport. “It takes four to five hours for testing the samples,” the official said.
The meeting was attended by senior officials from the civil administration and top health officials from Jammu, and lasted for more than three hours. “At least 18 to 20 officials participated in the meeting,” the official said.
It was only later that day that an IAS officer communicated the test results, and alerted the government at the same time. Gupta is now under administrative quarantine at a hospital in Jammu. It is still not clear how he got the infection in the first place.
A source said the bureaucrat had also chaired and attended a “number of meetings” before his COVID-19 report was out. As part of his duties, he had met the divisional commissioner of Kashmir, senior officials from the Srinagar district administration, the Kashmir health department, top officials from the Srinagar airport and members of the Central Industrial Security Force, which is in charge of the security at India’s airports.
Shortly after the government found out about Gupta testing positive, another senior official said, the chief secretary, some senior bureaucrats including financial commissioner health Atal Duloo; top officials from the Government Medical College (GMC), Jammu; and the health department opted for home quarantine.
The official said more than 30 bureaucrats, including IAS and KAS officers, had met Gupta before his COVID-19 results were available. “They include the officials of the rank of the financial secretary, principal secretary and commissioner secretary. All of them are either in quarantine or home isolation.”
In all, around 100 officials of different ranks in Srinagar and Jammu have been quarantined. A news report said the entire crew of a flight that Gupta had flown in had also been quarantined. Nasopharyngeal samples of his co-passengers have been sent for tests while they have been placed in administrative quarantine.
Another senior official in the Srinagar administration said the divisional commissioner of Kashmir and some other officials from the valley’s administration have also been recommended home quarantine.
A team of senior officials from the valley’s health department, including the director, his deputy and four other doctors who were in contact with Gupta during the last week of May, have been advised home quarantine for one week. They have also been asked to send their samples for COVID-19 tests on the sixth day of their quarantine period.
“Our contact-tracing team is in touch with different department to identify the officers who were in touch with the bureaucrat during the last week of May,” an employee at the office of the chief medical officer of Srinagar said.
J&K government spokesperson Rohit Kansal said that as per protocols, all contacts of a COVID19 positive person are to be quarantined. “It is the same for this person. Whosoever was in contact with [Gupta] will go in quarantine.”
‘VIP treatment’
However, Kansal, who had also attended the Jammu meeting, couldn’t say if he had also been quarantined. “I answered your questions, now please contact health officials for more details,” he said.
Kansal also refused to say whether Gupta had followed the COVID-19 protocols designed for travellers within J&K. “You will have to ask the health department. I’m not the judge [of] who follows the protocols,” he repeated.
Senior officials from the J&K health department and the deputy commissioner of Jammu did not respond to repeated calls and text message for their comments on the issue either.
An official order the government issued on May 25 mandates all passengers returning to J&K via road, train or air to undergo COVID-19 tests followed by 14 days of administrative quarantine.
Some groups of people, including pregnant women, cancer patients and officials on government duty, are eligible for home quarantine, also of 14 days.
However, doctors are uncomfortable with the latter as it pertains to officials. “Isn’t it a violation of COVID-19 protocols? The guidelines should be the same for everybody. Why this VIP treatment for officials?” said one doctor at GMC Jammu.
According to him, the decision could burden an already over-stretched hospitals network, and its overworked medicos. “We have to now run from one place to another to keep track of these cases and send separate teams for collection of samples,” the doctor said.
According to the order, “The testing and quarantine procedures will be applicable to all air travellers from red-zone districts to orange-zone districts within Jammu and Kashmir.”
However, a senior official in the health department said the bureaucrat, Gupta, should have taken “extra precautions” – more so when he had been assigned an important task and is expected to participate frequently in meetings related to COVID-19 management.
Over the last two weeks, J&K has been reported a spike in the number of coronavirus cases after people stranded in different parts of India and abroad started returning home. At least 2,601 persons have tested positive while 31 people – 27 from Kashmir and four from Jammu – have died of COVID-19 in the last three months.