Panaji:Goa Health Minister Vishwajit Rane on Tuesday slammed his Kerala counterpart for wrongly claiming the coastal state has no healthcare facilities to treat COVID-19 patients.
Kerala Health Minister K K Shailaja in her interview to BBC had claimed that the COVID-19 positive, patient who died in her state, had travelled from Goa as the state does not have required health care facilities.
The minister had also termed Goa as an Union Territory.
“It is very disheartening to hear what Shailaja has erroneously stated in the interview on an international platform. As per our information, the patient she’s referred to in the interview is from Mahe, Pondicherry and not Goa,” Rane said, in a statement released here.
He also said that the Kerala minister has erroneously mentioned Goa as an Union Territory, which actually is a state.
“Initially Goa had 7 positive COVID- 19 cases and all these cases were cured with no deaths recorded. Goa has a dedicated COVID hospital in coordination with other hospitals strategically located all over the State,” Rane said.
The minister said that Goa has an excellent team of doctors, who have a comprehensive COVID-19 plan and infrastructure which is well established to manage Covid patients.
“Goa was declared a ‘Green Zone’ after the recovery of above mentioned 7 cases for a period of almost two weeks,” he said.
Rane said that while the State was under lockdown, strictly no Interstate movement was allowed, which questions the authenticity of the point stated by the Health Minister of Kerala, that the positive patient was shifted from Goa to Kerala for treatment of COVID-19.
