Has Telangana Entered Stage-3 Of Covid, Asks Congress

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) Treasurer Gudur Narayana Reddy on Sunday demanded that the state government clarify whether the state had entered the third stage of the coronavirus spread.

He demanded that the state government disclose the profile of the patients who had tested positive for the coronavirus in the last 15 days.

"The whole of Telangana has been in a lockdown since March 22. There is a complete ban on inter-state and inter-district travel. As announced by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, nearly 27,000 suspects or their contacts with travel history have been quarantined, and almost everyone has completed the mandatory quarantine period of 28 days. If all the suspects have already been covered, from where are these new cases being reported every day? Have we already entered the stage-3 of community transmission?" he asked.

Speaking to media persons after distributing sanitizers and masks to poor people of slums in the Secunderabad Assembly segment, Reddy said that the state government was hiding not only many statistics, but also the real status of the Covid-19 situation in the state.

He also said that the state government's policy of going for less number of tests for the coronavirus had increased the threat of community transmission.

"As per the explanation given by the Chief Minister himself, Telangana should have been free from Coronavirus by April 7. Further, all containment zones should have turned into green zones by May 4. However, none of the deadlines set by the Chief Minister proved correct, and the number of coronavirus cases has kept on increasing every day," he said.

"The state government has kept the people's attention diverted by imposing new restrictions in the name of the lockdown. Instead of harassing the healthy individuals, the authorities should have focused on the identification of all suspects, their testing and their treatment. The state government should have ensured that all the suspects followed the quarantine rules. However, something went wrong somewhere and the state government is now trying to cover up its mistakes," he said.

Narayana Reddy demanded that the state government release a Status Note on the coronavirus situation in Telangana by giving complete details of the number of people it identified as suspects and how they were quarantined or treated later. It should also disclose the number of tests it conducted ever since the outbreak of pandemic, he said. And it should also disclose the grounds on which Covid-19 tests were not conducted on secondary contacts and other suspects with or without symptoms, he added.