A prisoner who tested positive for coronavirus escaped from a hospital in Haryana taking advantage of a protective suit. He has now been arrested.
The man, at a hospital in Jind district, allegedly put on a PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) that doctors and healthcare workers treating infected people wear. He then slipped out, unnoticed by the hospital security and the police.
"The court granted him bail after he tested COVID-19 positive. We had removed our security as he was hospitalised. He broke the window at an isolation facility and escaped wearing a PPE suit," Dharambir Singh, senior police officer, told news agency ANI.
The police had transferred the prisoner from the district jail to the government hospital after he tested positive. CCTV footage from the hospital shows the man in PPE, walking down a corridor among staff. He jumped out of a window on the first floor, the police said.
Coronavirus patients escaping from quarantine facilities are not new. Yesterday, a patient in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram was brought back after he ran away from a hospital. The Kerala government has ordered a probe, according to a Press Trust of India report. In Mumbai, an elderly patient tried to escape from an isolation facility.
Earlier in April, eight people in Madhya Pradesh's Indore, including six coronavirus patients and two suspected to have the infection, escaped from an isolation facility set up at a hotel.
Haryana has 5,209 coronavirus cases and 45 deaths. More than 70 per cent of the cases are from Gurgaon, Faridabad and Sonepat.
