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Telangana HC Seeks State's Response On Preparations For Tackling The Third Wave of COVID
On May 17 2021, A Division Bench of Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy, Telangana High Court directed the State Government to ensure that all the directions and guidelines provided by the court concerning COVID-19 should be followed sincerely. The court sought a proper response from the state on COVID-19 crisis management, describing the strategies and the steps to be taken to counter its predicted third wave.
The High Court proposed that COVID related life-saving drugs be included in the list of national essentials medicines, for the same purpose the court issued notice to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), an authority responsible for fixing the ceiling prices of non-scheduled drugs including life-saving drugs. The High Court expressed disappointment while taking note that around fifty-thousand tests were being conducted daily regardless of proper instructions and directions are given by the court to scale up the RT-PCR testing across the state to at least one lakh tests daily. The court also found that the government portals showing bed availability in hospitals were nothing near to the ground reality and did not make sense.
HC observed that the state didn't produce details on the measures taken for:
[1] Establishment of 14 new laboratories.
[2] Creation of toll-free numbers.
[3] Maintenance of a display board displaying the no. of dead bodies cremated or buried daily.
[4] An Advisory Committee to be constituted under section 17 of the Disaster Management Act.
[5] Creation of a network in collaboration with NGOs and other Institutions to aid or help those living BPL such as the destitute and the poor.
[6] Shifting the needy migrant workers into Night shelters.
High Court further directed the state:
[1] To issue a fresh government order, revising the charges for routine ward, oxygen beds, ICU beds, ventilator beds, ambulance.
[2] To take immediate measures to reconstitute a High-Level Task Force for addressing public grievance during the pandemic.
[3] To ensure the priority in vaccination of those persons who are disabled, and the persons having a medical condition.
[4] Introducing Drive-in vaccination programmes.
[5] To ensure an adequate number of mobile testing vans.
[6] To ensure all the pending salaries or wages of the outsourced and contractual staff in any public hospital, care centre or health facility should be paid.
[7] The regular COVID testing of prison staffs or all those allowed to enter the jail premises by DG prison.
[8] The Prison Hospital to maintain the stock of essential medicines for emergency cases in prison.
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