Civic officials and police officers have come across multiple instances recently where people who were supposed to stay quarantined at home stepped out of their homes.

Neighbours of these people who violated the rule called up cops or alerted the civic body.

About a week ago, a guard of a building on Park Street who had tested positive for Covid-19 slipped out of the room where he was supposed to stay and reached the rooftop. People who came to work in various offices in the building spotted him and alerted the police. Cops reached the building and put the guard back in his room, an officer said.

On Thursday, the son and daughter-in-law of a man in Behala’s Sakherbazar who had tested positive for the virus were spotted by neighbours queuing outside a grocery shop a little distance from their locality, a resident of the area said.

“They had first visited a shop in our locality but the shopkeeper refused to give them anything. Later, they went to a store some distance away where no one knew them. But one of our neighbours spotted them there,” the resident said.

A man makes his way past a guardrail on Amherst Street on Saturday Sanat Kr Sinha

The tendency among some people to jump home quarantine or home isolation has left the civic authorities worried, a Calcutta Municipal Corporation said.

In the Calcutta municipal area, close to 3,000 people have been home-quarantined and close to 1800 Covid-19 positive people have been allowed home isolation as they are either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. “It is impossible to post someone outside the homes of such people or their contacts,” an official of the CMC’s health department said.

The term “home quarantine” is being used for contacts of positive people and the term “home isolation” for those testing positive, a CMC official said.

People who have tested positive for Covid-19 have the ability to infect others by way of talking, sneezing or coughing, a CMC doctor said. “Droplets emanating from an infected person’s mouth can infect whoever comes in contact with him/her. This is why they have been asked to stay isolated at home for at least 14 days. It is expected that their ability to infect others person will no longer be there after 14 days.”

Patients’ contacts maybe asymptomatic and they have been advised to stay at home because the majority of Covid-19 patients are now asymptomatic people who had no idea they had contracted the infection till they were tested, the doctor said.

A man moves a guardrail on Maratha Ditch Lane in Bagbazar, drives in with his auto and (right) then replaces it Sanat Kr Sinha

“Asymptomatic people, too, can infect a person. This is why the contacts of positive patients who are asymptomatic have been asked to stay home-quarantined for 14 days, the duration during which symptoms may emerge. Even if symptoms do not emerge they retain the power to infect others in case they contract the virus,” the doctor said.

In a recent meeting with health officials in charge of the 16 boroughs of the CMC, a proposal was mooted to paste stickers outside homes of people in quarantine or isolation but it was rejected for fear of the family getting stigmatised.

“People have to realise why they should not step out in such a situation. They have to act responsibly. Neither the police nor the CMC has the manpower or the infrastructure to monitor all households where patients or their contacts are staying,” a CMC official said.