Mumbai: Thirteen employees working at the Municipal ENT Hospital in Churchgate and a doctor and a ward boy at the Tuberculosis Hospital, Sewri, tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday. With these new cases, nearly 275 healthcare workers in Mumbai are now Covid-positive.
Dr Deepika Rana, medical superintendent, ENT Hospital, said they had isolated all those employees who had tested positive and had begun tracing their contacts. “All of them contracted the infection from other infected people. More than 30 samples have been sent for testing at Kasturba and they are quarantined at the hospital. For now, we are taking the necessary precautions,” she said.
In the second instance, after a doctor and a ward boy of TB hospital were confirmed Covid-positive on Sunday, 80 health workers, including 10 doctors, have been quarantined at the hospital.
Dr Lalit Anande, medical superintendent, TB Hospital, said “In the last four days, three corona patients were admitted to the hospital, following which hospital staff were infected. Positive patients have been isolated. Our services have been affected.”
The same is the case in at least 20 hospitals in the city. Services have been hit after staffers have tested positive in droves. Currently, the number of such affected in Wockhardt has jumped to 86, followed by Jaslok (57) and Bhatia (35). The three tertiary teaching hospitals — KEM, Sion, BYL Nair, — have 41 cases, so far.
Infectious diseases specialist Dr Vikrant Shah said, because healthcare workers are at the forefront of fighting corona, they are getting rapidly infected and this is very worrying, because if it continues, there will be a shortage of doctors and nurses to look after patients under treatment. “The government needs to dedicate some more large hospitals like Nair, exclusively to corona patients. If the infected are confined to a few places, it will reduce the spread of the disease,” he said.
