New Delhi, March 17 (SocialNews.XYZ) Exactly one year after a United Kingdom-based auditor and two other staff members of a private company in Noida allegedly set off a chain reaction of Covid-19 infection among employees and their family members, the organisation is now fighting a legal battle.
External auditor John Humphreys landed in Delhi on March 11, took a flight directly to Dehradun and went to Selakui town.
From there, he had come to Noida on March 15 and left for the UK four days later. While in Noida, he visited the company on March 15 and met 10-20 employees.
He also visited another site where special fire safety equipment was being installed. The next day, he visited a Chinese restaurant to check a kitchen suppressant system.
The Noida district authorities blamed the auditor for spreading the infection at a time when the pandemic was at its nascent stage. The authorities scrambled for a month to track down people who came in his contact.
Noida District Magistrate Suhas LY had told IANS earlier that least 40 people got the infection from the auditor. Not just Humphreys, two other employees of the company had also travelled abroad.
The Managing Director, who later tested positive, had also returned from the UK on March 1 and another employee returned on March 7. According to health authorities, any of the three could have been the source.
"John is not working for us. No one from the company would like to comment because the matter is sub-judice and court proceedings are on. Anything said outside the court could be taken otherwise," a senior employee of the company told IANS a year after the incident.
In March last year, a case was registered against the private company under the Uttar Pradesh Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, on the basic of a complaint by Gautam Buddh Nagar Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Anurag Bhargava.
The Chief Medical Officer said that Humphreys carried out the audit of the company on March 14, 15 and 16, but the company did not inform about it to the health department, due to which various people of this company, including their family members, got infected.
The first coronavirus positive case in Noida was reported on March 8 and till March 21 five more cases were found. The UK-based auditor went back on March 19 and then there was a spurt in cases. Till March 27, the number of Covid-19 cases rose to 17.
On March 23, a woman residing in Sector-137 informed health officials about Covid-19 symptoms. She said her husband was in touch with a UK-based man in his office.
On March 24, the woman and her husband tested positive for the virus, following which the society was sealed for three days. The next day, their daughter also tested positive.
Another couple from Noida's Sector 50 also tested positive the same day, after coming in contact with the Sector-137 couple. This is how the virus had allegedly spread.
Source: IANS
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