The transmission of COVID-19 to healthcare staff in dialysis rooms has opened a new front in the battle against the pandemic in Puducherry.
At least eleven staff, including doctors at the dialysis section of the Indira Gandhi Government General Hospital, have caught COVID-19 from asymptomatic dialysis patients over the past few days.
According to sources, the infected staff include three medical officers, four nursing officers and two dialysis technicians. A couple of ward attenders and a sanitary worker have also tested positive for COVID-19.
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“The infection of health staff is a battle within the war on COVID as we are already managing the recent spurt in cases with an already stretched manpower,” said S. Mohan Kumar, Director of Health.
“For now, we have temporarily slowed down dialysis services at GH as we had to deploy skeletal staff from elsewhere to manage the section,” he said.
The GH has 18 dialysis machines apart from two equipment attached to critical care units.
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Patients with chronic kidney disease, apart from cancer patients and patients on immuno-suppressent therapy, are easily the most vulnerable segments to fall prey to COVID-19, doctors said.
With about 40 to 50 patients arriving for dialysis every day, and each patient dependant on the life-saving routine once a week, it is impossible to subject them to tests every time. Besides, Puducherry, which houses about 300 dialysis machines in State and private sector hospitals, is a refuge for patients seeking subsidised services from neighbouring districts in Tamil Nadu, doctors said.
Meanwhile, Puducherry reported two more COVID-19 deaths, pushing the toll to 33 while 123 new cases were detected on Thursday.
The new cases were identified during testing of 558 samples pointing to a positivity rate of 22 per cent, which is the highest recorded yet. The corresponding infection rate was 17.9 percent on Tuesday and 19.7 percent on Wednesday. The fatality rate stood at 1.4 per cent.
Of the new cases reported in the last 24 hours, Puducherry accounted for 119 cases, followed by Karaikal (3) and Yanam (1).
The overall tally in the Union Territory is 2,421 cases, which includes 987 active cases and 1,400 discharged patients.
The Health Department has tested 33,096 samples so far and found 30,260 of the samples to be negative.