Quarantine must for govt employees infected with 4 diseases besides Covid

Kolkata: The Bengal government has decided to grant quarantine leave to its employees in case they get infected with four other diseases apart from Covid.

The diseases, apart from Covid for which an employee has to go for quarantine are SARS, MARS, Avian Influenza (H5N1) or Novel Influenza and Crimean Congo Haemorrhagic Fever (CCHF).

The state Finance department issued a memorandum in this regard on Wednesday stating that attendance of an employee at office or place of duty is considered hazardous to their colleagues if he or she is infected with any of these diseases. So the decision has been taken to grant them "quarantine leave" in case the employee or any member of her or her family gets infected with these diseases.

The state government has taken the decision to include the four more diseases apart from that of Covid in the list to grant "quarantine leave" (under rule 198 of West Bengal Service Rule) following a detailed discussion with experts from the state Health and Family welfare department.

This comes when an outbreak of these diseases in the country had been considered to be infectious of which Covid was declared pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) this year.

A state government employee has to be in quarantine for 14 days and gets leave for the same period in case gets infected by Covid. In case of other four diseases - SARS, MARS, Avian Influenza (H5N1) or Novel Influenza and Crimean Congo Haemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) - also the employees will be getting quarantine leave for the same period.

According to the experts, this is a major decision taken by the state government in terms of ensuring safety of its employees from getting exposed to infectious diseases.