Nearly 150 CRPF officers including its director-general A.P. Maheshwari have been home-quarantined after coming into direct or indirect contact with the force’s chief medical officer who has tested positive for Covid-19, home ministry officials said on Saturday night.
Chief medical officer Deepak Kumar had been attached to the office of the force’s additional director-general (medical) and stayed at a transit mess for the CRPF in Saket, south Delhi. It’s not clear how the doctor caught the infection.
Initially, he was isolated along with eight other officers who had come in direct contact with him.
“The chief medical officer had reported a cough, fever and breathing problems on March 30. He tested positive on Thursday,” a home ministry official said.
This, he said, triggered a scare in the country’s largest paramilitary force and all those who had had indirect contact with him too were told to stay in home quarantine till their test reports arrived.
Each of these nearly 150 officers had come in contact with at least one of the eight direct contacts of Kumar.
“None of them has yet exhibited any symptoms of Covid-19,” a CRPF officer said.
Kumar is being treated at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Jhajjar, Haryana.
CRPF deputy inspector-general Moses Dhinakaran told The Telegraph: “A CRPF officer has tested positive for Covid-19. All personnel who came in contact with the officer have been quarantined. The DG had indirect contact with the said officer. As per protocol, the DG is observing quarantine.”
Sources said Maheshwari had confined himself to his south Delhi residence, from where he was supervising the force’s functioning.
The 2,500-odd CRPF personnel posted at the force’s CGO Complex headquarters here have been asked not to leave their stations without permission from superiors.
However, some of them are said to be flouting the order by visiting their hometowns in nearby states on weekends, posing a threat to those posted at the HQ, sources said.
“We are going to initiate (electronic) sharing of the live locations of those posted at the headquarters so that they cannot resort to unauthorised movements and become possible coronavirus carriers,” an officer said.
A home ministry official said the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, whose headquarters are located near the CRPF’s, have already arranged for the sharing of the live locations of the senior officers working from home.