Positive cases hide information, Patiala Health Department takes police help to trace past movements

Karam Prakash
Tribune News Service
Patiala, April 17

Finding itself in a fix — over positive patients hiding their travel history during the lockdown — the health department is compelled to take help of the police to trace their past movements before they fell prey to COVOD-19.

In one such incident, a social worker in Patiala — who was tested positive for the Coronavirus — initially, hid his movement to Zirakpur during strict curfew to help his friends a book-trader.

But on the insistence of health department, former had to give- in and revealed his name and later was tested came positive for the Coronavirus.

Patiala Health department said that they had been facing a huge problem because the patients were not revealing their movements, consequently, it was impossible to trace the source of infection.

Patiala civil surgeon said: “We have asked Police to track phone location of the positive patients before they fall sick. This will help us trace all the contacts and isolate them — to stem the spread.”

Non-cooperation by patients may lead exponential ascent in cases

In the meanwhile, experts say that if the infection goes untraced, the COVID-19 cases will continue to spiral upward.

Health experts informed that the state has not entered the stage 3 – community spread – therefore there were possibilities of tracing the source of infection if the patients revealed their entire history before falling sick from the virus.