PUNE: Four nurses working in wards dedicated to treatment of Covid-19 patients at the Sassoon General hospital have tested positive for the Sars-Cov-2 virus, which causes the Covid-19 infection, health department officials said on Wednesday. The test results came back positive on Tuesday night
Dr Ajay Chandanwale, dean of Sassoon hospital, said, “Four nurses have tested positive for the virus infection and we are now contact tracing. Also, they do not have any other illnesses. They have been isolated in the Covid-19 ward and, we have also home isolated their family members.”
The district administration has denied any lapse in providing safety equipment, or the hospital staff not maintaining social distancing, as a cause for the infections.
District collector Naval Kishore Ram said, “Nurses are the ones who take care of the patients and they are directly exposed to the patients who are infected. Every staffer in the hospital, be it nurses, doctors and even the sanitation staff, is being provided with PPE kits, masks and the necessary safety kits. They are also maintaining distancing within themselves, so it cannot be said that there is any safety lapse. The hospital administration is now contact tracing all those people who came in close contact with those nurses and only those people will be isolated.”
Ram said the administration cannot isolate the entire hospital staff, as they are crucial for the treatment of other patients at Sassoon.
Sassoon hospital, along with Naidu hospital, houses the maximum number of Covid-19 patients in Pune.
Sassoon hospital has admitted 68 patients of the 425 in the district, and has 51 positive cases of the 296 positive cases, as of April 14.
The hospital is also treating six of the seven Covid-19 patients who are critical, and has reported 28 of the 38 Covid-19-related deaths in the district.
Ram added that all doctors at the hospital will be isolated at hotels near the hospital to minimise exposure to their family members or people outside the hospital.
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