Premier government hospitals in the city have been hit hard by COVID-19 in the last fortnight. After positive cases being reported from NIMHANS, Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, and Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology, now five postgraduate doctors from Victoria Hospital and the Head of the department of gynaecology at ESI hospital in Rajajinagar tested positive on Friday night.
Following this, patients who had visited these hospitals in the last few days are now worried. Especially in ESI, as the gynaecologist is also a senior professor at ESIC Medical College, she had not just taken classes for MBBS students till Thursday but also conducted a c-section delivery a day before testing positive. Also, as Thursday happened to be her OPD day, she had seen several patients.
ESIC Medical College Dean Jithendra Kumar said the HOD had been isolated and is under treatment at the hospital. Stating that eight persons who were in contact with the doctor had been quarantined, he refused to divulge more details.
However, sources said that neither the OBG unit had been sanitised and fumigated nor had any staff members from the unit been quarantined.
“The hospital’s isolation ward has both positive and suspected patients under one roof. Postgraduate doctors, who visit the isolation ward, also attend to other non-COVID-19 patients. More than 20 patients and four staff members, including the HOD, tested positive in the last one month here. As the hospital has centralised air-conditioning, we are worried that we may have been exposed to the virus, but none of us have been tested or quarantined,” said a staff member on condition of anonymity.
Despite repeated attempts to contact the ESI Medical Superintendent, he was not available for comments.
Meanwhile, in Victoria Hospital, although several members from the hospital’s core committee, including Dean and Director C.R. Jayanthi, who function from the COVID-19 war room of the hospital, were in contact with the five PG doctors who tested positive, they have not quarantined themselves.
Confirming that the five PG doctors had tested positive, Dr. Jayanthi said 17 staff members from the hospital had been quarantined.
Dismissing reports that the core committee members had been exposed to the virus, she said: “We are tertiary contacts and there is no need for us to go into quarantine. We are functioning as usual. Seventeen primary and secondary contacts have been quarantined,” she said.
So far, two cancer patients at Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology, three cardiac patients at Jayadeva of which two died, and seven staffers at NIMHANS, who were infected by a mentally-ill patient, have tested positive.
Following this, the hospitals had quarantined all staff members, who came in contact with the positive patients, and fumigated the wards.
