The National COVID-19 Taskforce is reviewing the quarantine facility management protocol after some staff of hotels used as quarantine facilities in Thimphu and Samdrup Jongkhar tested positive for COVID-19 recently. The Prime Minister, during the Meet the Press session yesterday, said the national task force also decided to deploy additional police personnel at the quarantine centres to strictly monitor the quarantine facilities.
On April 20, three staff from a hotel used as a quarantine facility in Thimphu tested positive for COVID-19. It was found that one of them breached the quarantine protocol and sneaked out of the hotel three times.
Similarly, three days ago, one staff from a quarantine facility in Samdrup Jongkhar tested positive. The staff breached protocol and moved out of the hotel and allegedly visited his child at Karmaling Higher Secondary school in Samdrupcholing dungkhag.
Apart from these two cases, six frontline workers serving at quarantine facilities in Phuentshogling also tested positive for COVID-19 recently. It was found that the foreign labourers quarantined in the hotels they were working in were COVID positive. Although all their contacts tested negative, the incidents had the public, netizens questioning the health ministry’s standard operating procedure and quarantine facility management protocols.
The health minister said this is a result of pandemic fatigue and complacency as everyone is going through a prolonged period of the pandemic. Lyonpo said, nevertheless, the National COVID-19 Taskforce is currently reviewing every quarantine management protocol.
“We have had a series of consultations with the stakeholders- police, Desuup and health, figuring out how best we can enhance the existing protocol and continuously monitor the implementation within the quarantine facility as well. So it is not like we don’t have SOP, I think there is always a gap in having SOP and implementing it which we are now again reviewing and seeing how best we can address these,” said Dechen Wangmo, the Health Minister.
“We reviewed the protocol for people attending the quarantine facilities during the National Taskforce meeting. We even added some extra police force to monitor the quarantine facility. So now we have two layers- one group of Desuup quarantine facility managers will manage the facility and then we have an additional layer of police to manage the whole facility so that we don’t take chance on human errors and complacency,” Prime Minister Dr Lotay Tshering added.
The health minister said that although measures including suspension of incoming foreign workers have been taken considering the situation in the region, responsibilities should be taken at individual level as well.
Phub Gyem
