Health department officials in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, sent two Covid-19-positive patients back home on Wednesday, in what appeared to be a case of mistaken identities, before protests by residents forced the authorities to hospitalise and quarantine the duo again.

The two, residents of Indra Chawk and Peerzada localities of the city, had tested positive on April 21, which their neighbours were aware of.

Dinesh Kumar, district nodal officer for the coronavirus disease, said the two had the same names as two other persons who had been quarantined earlier at the isolation facility where the recently positive duo had been kept.

“There were two other people of the same names who were put in quarantine two weeks ago. They, along with 119 others, had completed 14 days at the Institute of Foreign Trade and Management (IFTM) on Wednesday. These two asymptomatic coronavirus-positive people were sent home in that confusion,” Kumar told reporters.

The institute is a private university where a quarantine centre has been operating for the past three weeks.

Milind Chandra Garg, chief medical officer, Moradabad, said it was a serious and unfortunate lapse. “The medical team is working wholeheartedly to deal with the situation. But two patients were wrongly sent home. It was a serious lapse and unfortunate. Both have been admitted to hospital. Those who came in contact with them have been put in quarantine”, Garg said.

Both of them have been admitted to Vivekanand College of Nursing, a private institute now designated by the state government as a Level-1 facility — or basic centre — for Covid-19 cases.

L-2 centres have better facilities while L-3 is for critical patients.

Garbage

Earlier, on April 20, sweepers at the quarantine centres at the IFTM and another institute, Shree Satya College, are alleged to have thrown garbage, including used water bottles and paper plates, into a pit near a road. Later, two other sweepers sold the items to a scrap dealer.

Khemwati Devi, chairperson, Pakbara Nagar Panchayat, said: “I had told officials much before not to throw garbage from quarantine centres there. But they didn’t listen to me.”

Himanshu Kumar, sub-divisional magistrate, Moradabad, said the waste items had been recovered and buried.

“The houses of the sweepers were sanitised and they have been put in quarantine. The godown of the scrap dealer was sealed and he and his family members were taken to a quarantine centre,” the officer had told reporters.

Three persons have died of Covid-19 in Moradabad and 97 have tested positive in the district so far.