Last week, the health ministry relaxed the stringent norms it had earlier imposed for the discharge of COVID-19 patients from hospitals and other medical facilities. Under the revised regulations, positive patients — given that they have mild, moderate, or no symptoms of the novel Coronavirus — can be discharged without being tested again, and are then required to follow a seven-day home quarantine. But while relaxing these norms the government has not taken into account the various places citizens stay in, from flats to chawls. Home quarantine is not possible for all discharged patients.

Keeping in line with these revised guidelines, Four residents of Govandi's Panchasheel chawl —who had tested positive twice —were discharged from an isolation centre in Shivaji Nagar on Wednesday afternoon. These patients were also made to sign a crude undertaking on a blank piece of paper as per the new guidelines, that they would "live in a separate room at home for the next seven days." As they were discharged, they presented the million-dollar question, how were they supposed to "live in a separate room" in their houses in the chawl?