Hyderabad: City BJP threatens stir against government laxity in containing Covid

Hyderabad: Former BJP State president Dr K Laxman threatened to launch 'Save Hyderabad from corona' if the State government fails take effective measures to contain the spread of the deadly virus.

Addressing the media persons here on Tuesday, Laxman said, "BJP's Hyderabad unit will launch the agitation in a big way and he will be writing a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, to dispatch a central team to verify the State government functioning in containing the spread of Covid."

He lashed out at the government for being a mute spectator when the deadly virus is unleashing its ugly pangs claiming more and more lives in Hyderabad and Telangana.

Taking a dig at the government, he asked whether it is competing to bring Hyderabad on par with Mumbai and Delhi by allowing more number of cases to spike by not trying to contain its spread.

The BJP leader said TS is conducting only symptomatic tests, but, "not to the primary contacts and the family members of the Covid positive patients". Adding further, he said during the past three days from June 6 to 8, Telangana had conducted only 1,857 tests as against 31,289 by Maharashtra, 40,279 by Tami Nadu, 35,718 by Uttar Pradesh and 38,773 by Rajasthan.

Shockingly, "The ratio of positive cases out of 1,857 tests conducted in TS was 25 per cent," he added.

Also, the neighbouring AP conducted 9,256 tests per 10 lakh population, as against only 628 in Telangana. That apart, the number of positive cases in TS was 3,920 against 5,029 positive cases in AP. But, the "mortality rate in AP was 1.2 per cent (79 persons) as against 3.8 per cent (148 persons) in TS. Also, the recovery rate in AP was 55, whit it was 44 in TS," he said.

The BJP leader alleged that the State government is depriving citizens of their right to life preventing them to get tested in the ICMR-approved Covid private labs.

"The Sate has 25 labs that can conduct 15,000 tests per day. But, only 500 tests are conducted because the state government barred 15 private labs to conduct Covid tests and threatening to slap criminal cases on them," he said. Laxman said the situation in Gandhi Hospital is turning from bad to worse. Incidents of an untraceable dead body, handing over the wrong body of the Covid deceased to the family, treating 2,000 patients with a 500-bed strength, shortage of ICU beds, ventilators, PPE kits and N95 masks to doctors- all these expose the gross negligence on the part of the State government, he said.

Videos on how a journalist Manoj died in Gandhi Hospital doing rounds on social media reveals the pathetic conditions at Gandhi hospital.

Yet, five more scribes are admitted to the same hospital. He demanded an ex gratia of Rs 50 lakh to the family of Manoj, a government job to his wife etc.