At least 25 hospital staff, including 19 nurses, from the Ruby Hall Clinic in Pune have tested positive for COVID-19 over the past fortnight and have been quarantined in isolation facilities, said hospital authorities.
In Mumbai, four resident doctors have tested positive at the civic-run Sion Hospital, taking the total number of affected staff in the hospital to 23. Earlier, 10 resident doctors; seven nurses, including a staff nurse, an assistant matron, and five student nurses; a Class IV worker and a blood bank technician from the hospital had tested positive. Four resident doctors at the civic-run Nair Hospital had also tested positive last week.
Testing drive
Bomi Bhote, chief executive officer, Ruby Hall Clinic, said apart from the nurses, three support staff and three clinical assistants were found to be positive for COVID-19 during tests conducted on 1,000 of the hospital employees over the last 15 days.
“All of them are asymptomatic and in a stable condition. They have been quarantined in a dedicated COVID-19 building on the hospital premises, and all their primary contacts have been traced and tested,” Mr. Bhote said.
The case of one employee, who came from the highly infected zone of Kasarwadi, prompted the authorities to conduct a testing drive of their own employees.
On April 12, a 45-year-old nurse with the hospital had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The nurse, who worked in the hospital’s general ward, had returned from leave when she began displaying virus-like symptoms. Her throat swab sample test had returned positive.
Four nurses from Sassoon General Hospital had tested positive on April 14 and 15, while a radiologist practising in Shikrapur, around 40 km from Pune, had tested positive of April 14.
Earlier this month, more than 40 doctors and nurses of a medical college and hospital in Pimpri had been quarantined after an autorickshaw driver, who had been undergoing treatment at that hospital for accident injuries, had tested positive for COVID-19. Fortunately, the test results of all 42 medical personnel had returned negative.
Colleague infects cops
Meanwhile, two policemen from the Faraskhana police station have also tested positive for COVID-19. According to authorities, they contracted the virus from a constable attached to the same police station. The constable, in turn, had contracted the infection from his wife.
The couple are undergoing treatment at Pimpri’s Yashwantrao Chavan Memorial Hospital. Till now three policemen in Pune and 49 personnel in the State have tested positive for COVID-19.
(Inputs from Jyoti Shelar)
