Admit all Covid patients for 14 days: Chennai corporation to private hospital

CHENNAI: The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) has issued a communication to Apollo Hospitals asking it to admit all Covid-19 patients for 14 days, in order to reduce the spread of the Omicron variant.

The civic body also ordered the hospital not to give home-quarantine certificates to Covid patients.

This caused confusion among doctors as the city corporation’s directions were against the ones laid out by the Directorate of Public Health, under which mild cases be could home-quarantined.

However, GCC Commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi told TOI that the communications sent by the zonal health officer of Zone 9 (Teynampet) were not accurate and the officer has been pulled up by him.

“The instructions given by us were not communicated properly. We have only told the zonal teams to instruct private hospitals to inform the GCC about the details of patients who are discharged before the 14-day period so we can follow up,” he said.

The corporation commissioner said a centralised circular would be released later in the day.