PIL seeking COVID house to house survey, testing facilities in de-contained zones withdrawn from Court

A PIL seeking direction to Delhi Government for accessing and availing house to house survey and testing facilities for locating COVID-19 cases in de-contained zones, non-containment zones and treating them accordingly was on Wednesday withdrawn by the petitioner.

The petition moved in the Delhi High Court by a practising lawyer Keshav Maheshwari seeking direction to Delhi government to frame processing of the application to take the initiative of making testing facility through government-approved staff and home collection of samples may be done by all the private laboratories of for avoiding normal contact and also avoiding unnecessary time travel and gathering in outer zones laboratories.

Division Bench of Justice DN Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan on Wednesday refused to grant any relief to the petitioner after he failed to convince the court.

The plea stated that the testing must be made accessible to de-contained zones as well to ensure health safety.

"The rapid antigen test must be made easily available to anyone to contain the spread of COVID-19. Respondents are not obliged to frame mandatory guidelines/advisories for processing the ramping up of COVID-19 testing facilities and house surveys for individuals, symptomatic, asymptomatic cases, SARI patients as accessible in containment zones, shall be made accessible to de-contained zones/non-containment zones/ as well for locating the active cases and containing transmission of the COVID-19," plea mentioned.

The petition also alleged that the respondents had not taken any accurate and appropriate action/steps against combatting/discontinuing the spread of COVID-19 in non-hotspots/non-containment zones.

( With inputs from ANI )