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HomeIndiaTelangana health dept asks politicians, party workers to isolate after Hyderabad campaign

Telangana health dept asks politicians, party workers to isolate after Hyderabad campaign

Citing the festive season and the recently conducted GHMC polls, the state health department asked everyone who participated to quarantine for 7 days to avoid a Covid spike.

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Hyderabad: The Telangana health department has urged all public representatives, political leaders and party workers who participated in the civic body election to go into immediate isolation to avoid a further spread of Covid-19.

The state capital went to polls on 1 December for the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) and witnessed a politically-charged campaign in the days leading up to it.

Director of Public Health G. Srinivas Rao asked everyone, including ground-level party workers who carried out political rallies, to go into quarantine for the next seven days.

“Thousands of party workers were part of these campaigning rallies, they mingled with the public, and there was an extensive campaign for the polls. We have seen few cases of them not following any Covid precautionary norms. To protect ourselves from this second wave … I am asking all public representatives, party leaders, workers from the top most level to the bottom, to immediately isolate themselves for the next seven days,” Rao said Wednesday.

“We do not know who could be silent carriers and it takes a few days for infection to show and more mingling with people now could lead to further spread and contribute to a second wave,” he explained.

Rao said the health department was expecting a “definite surge” in Covid cases in the coming weeks due to the GHMC polls and the festive season celebrations that came before that.


Also read: Behind BJP’s grand Hyderabad campaign is a 2017 plan by Amit Shah


Testing centres increased  

Rao said all political leaders and workers should get tested for the infectious disease and added that the health department set up 50 additional testing centres in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal area limits. The department is also using over 300 mobile testing vans. There are currently 1,096 government-run testing centres.

“The polls were held yesterday and we will not know the effect of all of this immediately … it will take time to see how many new infections we have. So, we are urging all the people to be really careful for the next few weeks, at least from December to mid-January,” Rao said.

The run up to the GHMC election saw high decibel campaigns by political parties, especially from the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP).

The national party, that is still basking in its victory in the Dubakka bypoll, had brought in the big guns — Home Minister Amit Shah and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath conducted mega road shows in the city that saw thousands of party workers participate.

Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, despite warning about a ‘second wave’ last month, also conducted a public meeting in a sports stadium in the city, which saw TRS representatives from districts.

“We had really low case (numbers) in November because people followed precautions. But in the last 10 days, we saw a lot of political rallies, gatherings … even if two of them had an infection, it would be an easy spread,” Ramesh Reddy, director of medical education, said.

Telangana recorded a positivity rate of 2.57 per cent in November. Earlier criticised for its extremely low testing rate, the state tested 55,51,620 samples as of 1 December.


Also read: Buoyed by Dubbaka bypoll win, BJP looks for bigger role in Telangana


 

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