Top medical officials, including the superintendent, resident medical officer of the government hospital, and the district nodal officer for COVID-19 in Jogulamba-Gadwal district, have been sent to home quarantine after a lab technician tested positive two days ago.
A total of 14 primary contacts of the 40-year-old technician have been quarantined, but no samples were collected as none of these people showed any symptoms.
The lab technician was asymptomatic and was tested on a random basis as part of a routine exercise.
“On April 22, before sending the samples to Hyderabad, we asked him and a sanitation worker at the hospital to give their samples, as a routine check. The next day, we got the results and he along with nine others tested positive,” a health department official said.
In a twist of irony, the technician had collected his own swabs for testing. Since he had no symptoms, the man did not think twice before sending his own samples for testing.
He even showed up to duty the next day.
Sources told The Hindu that the person may have contracted the virus when he travelled in a 108 ambulance that was not disinfected after shifting a COVID-19 patient to Gandhi Hospital.
“In the wee hours of April 3, the unlikely patient visited the CCMB in Hyderabad to deliver a batch of swab samples in an ambulance. He was seated alongside the driver of the vehicle,” the officer said, asking not to be named. On April 21, the victim again reported for COVID-19 duty and collected 56 swabs, and another 28 samples on April 22, including his own. Once the results were out, he was shifted to Gandhi Hospital, while 14 of his primary contacts, including his wife and top medical officers, were asked to home quarantine.
Officers in Gadwal are now besieged with worry as to the way forward, with the lab technician having been in close contact with several senior healthcare officials, who in turn used to meet and brief top government officials about the coronavirus situation.
The officer admitted that the development raises grave concerns about the lapses on the part of district authorities in sanitising ambulances and providing adequate personal protection equipment (PPEs) to frontline staff.
However, Gadwal Collector Shruti Ojha did not respond to repeated calls and texts from The Hindu.
In another related and worrying instance of public authorities taking rules for granted, an elected public representative from Gadwal town is learnt to have visited containment zones (where only authorised officials are allowed) as a volunteer with his supporters for distributing vegetables, along with revenue officers, before he was tested positive. “If this turns out to be true, officials may well have to test hundreds of residents in the said containment zones,” sources said.
The officials maintained that he is a primary contact of a positive person who contracted it from a Markaz returnee. His brother, a journalist with a vernacular news channel, also tested positive.
