High Drama After COVID-Positive Actress Refuses To Enter Govt Hospital

Kolkata: A British actress, who had tested positive for COVID-19 after arriving from the UK, was taken to a private facility after she refused to be treated at a government hospital in Kolkata.

Sources said the actress, Banita Sandhu, had arrived in Kolkata on December 20 for the shooting of her film ‘Kavita & Teresa’. Incidentally, she travelled in the same flight with a youth who had tested positive for the mutant coronavirus strain on his return from the UK.

When she tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday afternoon, steps were taken to ascertain if she was infected with the new strain of the coronavirus, news agency PTI reported.

As a mandatory measure, Banita was taken to the state-run Beliaghata Infectious Diseases Hospital where a separate unit has been set up to house those who have travelled from the UK.

The 23-year-old actress, however, refused to come out of the ambulance alleging that the hospital lacked proper infrastructure.

“We had to inform the state secretariat and the health department as she was unwilling to come out of the ambulance and at one point in time, she wanted to leave. The British High Commission was informed as we cannot let her go like this which is against the protocol. We had to inform the police also. They (police personnel) came and surrounded the ambulance so that she cannot leave,” an official told PTI.

Banita was even counselled by senior doctors of the hospital, but in vain. Eventually, she was admitted to a private hospital and has been kept in an isolated cabin there, with the permission of the health department.

Before leaving the government facility, Banita was made to sign a declaration that she was unwilling to get treatment there as “she felt the medical establishment lacked infrastructure”.

Officials said Banita’s samples will be sent for genetic analysis to Kalyani’s National Institute of Biomedical Genomics to ascertain if she is infected with the new strain of the coronavirus or not.

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