Quarantine posters go, Chandigarh residents debate benefits

Gaurav Kanthwal

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 16

Families scrapping the home-quarantine boards from outside their houses in the city is just one side of the story as there are those too who are exactly doing what needs to be done.

A resident of Sector 8, who is a retired Army officer, called up the area councillor himself to get a board affixed after testing positive for Covid.

Another example of a responsible citizen: A golf club member, whose family had tested positive, waited for two days for the Municipal Corporation officials to come and remove the board. “Till then, the whole family remained inside and waited patiently,” said Ward No. 1 councillor Maheshinder Singh Sidhu.

City residents feel it is natural for the neighbours of a quarantined family to live in paranoia, but in many cases, the quarantined family suffers too.

In Sector 7, two sons of a family in quarantine went out to the market to buy bread but the shopkeeper refused selling it to them. “The shopkeeper knows us since our childhood. Yet he behaved so erratically,” recounted a youngster. Jittery neighbours complaining about the family members in home quarantine has become a daily occurrence in the past eight months.

MC officials have done the bulk of the contact tracing, pasting quarantine boards and garbage collection. MC Additional Commissioner Anil Kumar Garg, who is in-charge of the three tasks, said: “Only the boards will go, rest of the protocol remains the same. As many as 75 people are involved in contact tracing. As the cases are rising, more and more teams are being inducted.”

Six months and 8,958 cases later, the Administration has decided to stop pasting quarantine posters outside houses due to the social stigma. Whether the decision will do good or bad, it remains to be seen but it has evoked a fierce debate over the benefits and ill-effects of the practice.

District Magistrate Mandip Brar had issued an order stating, “The list of all persons in home quarantine will be updated on the UT website… An apprehension has been raised that some people will not adhere to the home quarantine thereby endangering public safety. Any breach of this order would invite action under Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code.”