Baboon cutouts to counter monkey menace at COVID Centre

NEW DELHI: It looks funny, but the idea turned very effective when Baboon cutouts were used to keep monkeys away from Sardar Patel Covid Care Centre, Radha Soami Beas in Delhi's Chhattarpur -- India's largest Covid care facility.

Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) came up with the idea to stop monkey menace at the 10,200-bed facility situated in south Delhi. The problem is being faced by medical staff wearing PPE kits there since the inauguration of the centre on July 5 last year. The ITBP, India's one of the seven Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), has been handling the whole operation there.

"In the past few days, it was seen that monkey groups roam and sometimes become aggressive and try to attack the personnel deployed to look after the covid care centre specifically people who are deployed in PPE kits," ITBP spokesperson Vivek Pandey told IANS.

To counter the monkey menace in and around, Pandey said, the ITBP placed cutouts of Baboons at the premises of the Covid care centre.

"The cutouts of Baboons seem to be very effective as of now and monkey groups are somehow keeping away from entering the premises once these cutouts were placed." These cutouts are randomly rotated daily to the new places across the centre so that the monkey groups cannot guess these being static and are not real, said the officer.

The centre is 1,700 feet long and 700 feet wide-- roughly the size of 20 football fields-- and had 200 enclosures with 50 beds each.

The Covid-19 facility was closed down in February when coronavirus cases in the capital had reduced significantly. It was revived again in April considering the unprecedented surge in cases. (IANS)

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