greater noida a team of two doctors and two lab technicians visited khandera village on tuesday and began testing villagers for covid and distributing medicine kits among them the visit came a day after toi highlighted the need for medical intervention at a time rural areas in the district were witnessing a surge in covid cases the primary health centre in khandera which caters to nine villages in the vicinity has been operational off and on villagers said officials have attributed this to severe staff crunch and have pointed out that most of the staffers had been deployed on covid duty elsewhere yes we have a severe staff crunch that is one of the reasons why were unable to carry out medical functions despite a phc being ready in the ongoing pandemic our priority has been to ration existing resources so that we have the manpower for extensive testing vaccination and other activities said dr narendra tiwari the medical officer incharge of dankaur zoneaccording to tiwari while primary health centres only provide opd services community health centres chc and district hospitals are for emergencies too however after an april 16 order most phcs had to be shut despite this we have kept a few phcs operational especially in areas where the nearest chc or district hospital is too far the shutting down of phcs was done to deploy the existing resources like staff for covidrelated activitiesvillagers though are not convinced and want the phcs to be operational again once such place is bilaspur tehsil here the phc was built to cater to a population of over 1 lakh residents of 36 villages the phc has six subcentres under it according to residents of some of the villages the phc has been operational intermittently and was reopened a day before the chief ministers visit on sundaythe phc was operational from saturday to monday before being shut again on tuesday omkar bhati who claimed to be the meerut mandal coordinator for the vishwa hindu mahasangh said the phc had six beds and a pathology too but the fact is that ward boys have been running the phc earlier doctors visited once a month or in 20 daysjewar mla thakur dhirendra singh who said he had visited the bilaspur phc last week claimed that the centre was shut because of the governments orders there is no electricity or security here and the bathrooms are broken i have spoken to the nagar panchayat chairman about these issues at the phc it can be started once these issues are fixed till then testing is also expected to be complete mla audio rowin an audio clip that has gone viral on social media dadri mla tejpal nagar is purportedly heard saying the sdm is not receiving his call in the audio which is believed to be a conversation between the mla and an attendant of a patient the latter can be heard telling nagar he is unable to get an oxygen cylinder despite a letter from