This incident played out outside the flu outpatient department gates of the Uttar Pradesh University of Medical Sciences in Saifai , in Uttar Pradesh’s Etawah district when a bus with 69 COVID-19 patients reached the gates of the hospital early Thursday morning.

The patients were transferred from Agra to the government hospital in Saifai, among the biggest hospitals in the region. The patients had been sent from Agra, 116 km away,  in a UP transport bus,Local authorities insist an escort team was sent with the bus.

In a video the patients sitting on a footpath outside the shut gates of the hospital. Another video shows the patients, mostly wearing only a mask to cover their faces, they picking up water from a sack kept near the bus as two policemen in protective gear direct them from a distance. From the video, it appears that the cops had accompanied the bus from Agra.

The first local government official in Saifai to reach the gates of the Uttar Pradesh University of Medical Sciences was a senior police officer who is the officer in-charge of the area . In a mobile video, he can be seen and heard addressing the COVID-19 patients from a distance, surrounded by a few other cops.

“Stay here. I am sure a medical team will be here soon and will make a list and take you in. What has happened has happened. If you run around, then everyone will get it. Do not try and roam around here. There was no information, else lists would have been made. There was no information, you have arrived all of a sudden,” says police officer Chandra Pal Singh in the mobile video.

The vice-chancellor of the university that runs the hospital admitted that there was a lack of communication but said doctors or paramedical staff at the Saifai hospital was not to be blamed.

“I cannot say who was negligent but the patients had to reach a day earlier (Wednesday ) and when patients are transferred in such large numbers, the procedure is that a responsible officer or doctor comes with a list, with names and clinical status of the patients. We then take the patients inside. But there were communication gaps. Our team was alert. Because of this, they did not reach on the scheduled day but the next day. I found out that our team did not have information. But our team took them in despite them not having any documents. It took 30 minutes to an hour. I am not sure they roamed around anywhere, but if you are saying it, they may have roamed around. I have not managed to verify this,” said Dr Raj Kumar, vice-chancellor of the Uttar Pradesh University of Medical Sciences.