One of the top public medical professionals of West Bengal, Assistant Director of West Bengal Health Services Biplab Kanti Dasgupta, aged 60, died early on Sunday.
While it is not yet officially announced that Dr. Dasgupta was afflicted with the COVID-19, the West Bengal Doctors Forum (WBDF) has claimed that this is the “first reported death” of someone from the “medical fraternity in the State, who tested positive for COVID-19”.
Dr. Dasgupta’s wife also tested positive, the statement claimed.
Expressing condolences, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said Dr. Dasgupta’s “sacrifice for the cause of ailing humanity will ever be in our hearts and will make our COVID warriors fight the deadly virus with even greater determination”.
“We are deeply pained with his untimely demise,” she said.
The WBDF has issued a strongly worded statement appealing to the State government to issue “a separate medical bulletin daily to appraise us about the condition of the healthcare workers under treatment and quarantine”.
“It is pertinent to note here that over the last few weeks more and more healthcare workers are diagnosed with COVID-19, some of them even asymptomatic, while several others are in quarantine.
“With limited resources at disposal, we cannot afford to have a situation where the shortage of healthcare providers poses a threat to delivery of care,” the WBDF statement noted.
The doctors’ body said they need “more intensive testing specially of each and every healthcare provider, even asymptomatic ones, adequate and appropriate PPEs, strict adherence to the ICMT guidelines including death certification as per the ICD 10 principles…”
The ICD-10 is the tenth revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), as recommended by the World Health Organisation.
Earlier this week, the Chief Minister said the Centre was not supplying an adequate number of kits.
There are three types of kits, Ms. Banerjee said. The rapid testing kit, the BGI Group’s real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and antigen kits.
“The BGI RT-PCRs are withdrawn as per the email from NICED received yesterday [Tuesday]. Antigen KITS are not available in the Bengal hospitals. Therefore, the State would not have even one kit currently in stock. All rapid testing kits sent to our State have been withdrawn,” said Ms. Banerjee.
The National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED), which is under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), also acknowledged that the received kits are faulty.
“This has been noted by the ICMR as well.....It is unfortunate that the kits are not standardised by the manufacturer to give exact results,” NICED director Shanta Dutta earlier told The Hindu .
Reports claim that many of the non-medical staff in the public hospitals have contracted the virus.
