Through a tweet on Saturday, 14 March, the Press Information Bureau had announced that the Centre had decided to provide families of patients who succumbed to COVID-19, commonly referred to as the coronavirus, with an ex gratia of Rs 4 lakh after due certification.
For this purpose, the central government has decided to treat COVID-19 as a notified disaster in order to provide assistance from the State Disaster Response Fund, PIB said in a tweet.
But hours later, the Centre made a U-turn and decided to do away with the monetary assistance for the families of the deceased and for coronavirus-positive patients requiring hospitalisation, reported Economic Times.
According to the initial notification, an ex gratia payment of Rs 4 lakh was to be provided “per deceased person including those involved in relief operations or associated in response activities, subject to certification regarding cause of death from appropriate authority”.
Additionally, the notification also empowers State Executive Committees to take appropriate measures for quarantine, sample collection and screening as per actual expenditure and as per assessment made by them. It also empowers SECs to take steps to ensure effective containment of outbreak for upto a period of 30 days.
There have been 83 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in India, which include 66 Indian citizens and 17 foreign nationals. The country has seen the first two COVID-19 deaths in the past two days. Globally, the total number of COVID-19 cases has touched 145,857, of which 5,436 people have died while 72,532 have recovered.
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