The Army on Tuesday assured the 350 Indian students who were evacuated from China following the novel coronavirus outbreak, and have been quarantined in Manesar, Haryana, for the past two weeks that they will be provided with hot water twice a day.
The action came after repeated appeals by the students. They were being provided with hot water for bathing just once everyday, between 6.30 am and 7.30 am. They claimed some students had not bathed for about 36 hours for want of hot water.
The Health Ministry, in an advisory, has urged that personal hygiene be maintained to prevent infection from the virus. While five suspect cases were moved out of the camp on Monday as their tests were confirmed negative, one suspect case with symptoms of cough and cold was moved into isolation on Tuesday. His test results are awaited.
“From Tuesday, we have been assured that we will be able to access hot water from 5 pm to 6 pm, too. In the morning, we will be able to avail ourselves of the facility from 6 to 8. It is too difficult for up to 350 students to bathe in just an hour, early in the morning. It is very cold, too,” said Manoj Prakash (24), a quarantined medical student of China Three Gorges University (CTGU) in Yinchang city, Hubei province.
Wuhan, which is at the centre of the outbreak, is also in Hubei.
Another student, Jelin Prabhakar, said: “Toilets in the camp, which were earlier unclean, have now been cleaned.”
Close to 50 students travelled six hours from Yinchang to Wuhan, and were evacuated from there along with students from Wuhan University, and brought to Delhi on February 2. At the Manesar quarantine facility, up to 22 students sleep in one dormitory, and there are close to 20 such dormitories.
“We are adjusting...The food is fine, but the canteen holds close to 100 persons at a time and gets crowded. Also, there are only 10 toilets for 350 students,” said Manoj.
To date, three students from Kerala have reported positive for the virus and their condition is stable. “Up to 454 samples in India have been tested till date, and 451 samples are negative, while three are positive,” stated a government release.
WHO report
According to the WHO’s latest situation report, 17,391 persons have been confirmed positive for the infection, and 362 have died.
Meanwhile, K Muraleedharan, Member of Parliament from Kerala, has written to Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on the inadequacy of the virus testing facility in India.
“It is a matter of grave concern that there is only one advanced centre (National Institute of Virology, Pune) catering to the 130-billion population of the country. This delays detection and containment of deadly infectious diseases like Nipah and coronavirus,” he said.
“In the second confirmed case, the patient came to India from China on January 24. After sending the samples to NIV Pune, the results came (only) in a week. I request the Ministry of Health to take immediate steps to provide funding to develop testing facilities in the National Institute of Virology in Alappuzha and Institute of Advance Virology in Thiruvananthapuram and make them centres of excellence to tackle such disease outbreaks,” he wrote.