SRINAGAR: After three days, several people who had returned from foreign countries and had been put into official quarantine facilities at Haj House, were taken to a hotel and given separate rooms on Saturday.
Officials finally shifted today the people kept at Haj House where more than one person was accommodated in a room, to a hotel in Rajbagh where they have been kept separately in single rooms. During the past three days, the quarantined people had not gone through any medical check-up. A team of health department staff had refused to check them after they found them without protection gear.
Myasir Ali, the cousin of a student who has returned from Bangladesh, told Kashmir Reader that people kept at Haj house have been taken to a hotel where a single room has been given to all of them.
“I am finally relieved,” he said. “My quarantined cousin now has some sort of safety. On the first day, when my cousin was bundled into the Haj house along with others, I had tried to reach out to two advisors of the Lieutenant Governor, two Deputy Commissioners, but all in vain. I protested outside their houses, fought with officials, and now it has borne fruit.”
Before shifting them to a hotel at Rajbagh today, the government had moved the quarantined people to another hotel on the city outskirts. Kashmir Reader has learnt that there was stiff resistance from the owner of the hotel who refused to provide space for the people.
“The DC Srinagar intervened, but the owner was reluctant. The hotel was then sealed, and the students were moved to another location,” sources said.
At the Haj House, people were kept together in a few rooms that had no masks, no sanitisers, and no hygienic washrooms.
A senior doctor said that it is better to be late than never, but damage that was supposed to be prevented by quarantine, might have been done.
“This should have been done in the first place. Let’s hope that efforts made now do the damage control,” the doctor said.

Junaid Nabi Bazaz