M F AHMAD
Daltonganj, Dec 12: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has made the process easier for declaring a person to have died of covid-19 or not.
The ICMR makes a day of testing and positive finding for covid-19 resulting in death as the first point of claim for ex gratia assistance worth 50,000 rupees.
The ICMR says this is for those people who were covid-19 positive but died outside the hospital or in a patient facility center. It says 95 percent of people have died of covid-19 within 25 days from testing.
The ICMR adds 5 more days to it taking it to 30 days when from the day of testing and found covid positive the patient dies.
Asking about the patient died outside the hospital or patient who died beyond 30 days from the testing, secretary state disaster management authority Ranchi Amitabh Kaushal said the ICMR has set very clear guidelines and death beyond 30 days from testing or clinically determined to be a case of covid-19, can be declared as death by covid-19.
There is a provision of grievance redressal also which has on its panel additional collector, chief medical officer, principal of the medical college or head of the department of medicine etc.
A claim for ex gratia assistance having no deficiency or shortcoming has to be settled in 30 days from the date of filing of the claim for ex gratia assistance. There is a palpable fear of middlemen ditching the covid-19 death affected families by way of exaggerating the procedures of ex gratia assistance which in fact is highly people friendly.
