Thiruvananthapuram: BJP state President K Surendran came down heavily on the state government for its negligence on fighting against the coronavirus outbreak.
“If the state government had followed the directives given to Kerala by Central government, there would not have been such an alarming situation now,” he said.
“The Ministry of Health had issued letter on February 26 to Kerala and other states, directing them to monitor and be vigilant. If the systems had started working at the same time on receiving the advisory, such a faulty situation could have been avoided. Unfortunately, it did not happen,” he said.
In the aforementioned letter, the Central government had also advised to keep a check on those arriving from Singapore, Korea, Iran and Italy. But the state health department neglected the direction. It was only from March 2 that people coming from these countries started to be screened. This is also evident from the Facebook post of Health Minister.
“On February 26, world media started reporting about the outbreak in Italy and on the same day Central government had issued the letter, ordering a 14-day quarantine of those coming from Italy. But the state government was rejoicing its success when it defeated the first case of the virus,” K Surendran said.