Telangana shuts doors for patients from other states

Telangana has unofficially shut its doors on patients from other states attempting to gain access to the modern healthcare facilities in Hyderabad, amid a scarcity of hospital ICU beds and oxygen supplies, and a spike in Covid-19 cases. While there is no official announcement, the Telangana Police have stopped private ambulances with patients from neighbouring states to cross the borders without any communication on confirmed allocation of hospital ICU beds in Hyderabad.

Meanwhile, the rural police in the bordering Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh have instructed check-post staff not to allow ambulances without communication of confirmed beds in Hyderabad to cross the Andhra borders. A senior Andhra police official confirmed that they have been discouraging patients from Andhra going to Hyderabad as a precautionary step and to avoid inconvenience to Telangana.

“We are asking the patients in Andhra to obtain the prior approval and allotment of beds by the hospitals in Telangana either from the Telangana government or from the hospitals there before leaving for Hyderabad in private ambulances,” said the police official, who did not want to be named.


The issue assumes significance in the backdrop of the restrictions that most states have imposed on people from the two Telugu-speaking states, directing 14 days of quarantine for them. Telangana’s move comes even as the union government in an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court said that no patient should be refused admission, irrespective of which state the person belongs to or due to lack of a valid identity card and a positive test report for Covid-19.