Two doctors at Safdarjung hospital tested positive for coronavirus.
Three doctors in Delhi and two nurses in Mumbai have tested positive for coronavirus, sources said today. Two of the cases were from Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital and one from the Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel Hospital. .
One of the Safdarjung doctors, a third-year post-graduate student of the biochemistry department, has just returned from Dubai. The other one contracted the infection from a patient, again highlighting the inadequate protective gear for medical personnel at even the top hospitals of the national capital.
Both doctors showed symptoms of COVID-19 and their test results came positive two days ago. They are now undergoing treatment at the hospital's isolation ward.
This takes the number of affected doctors in Delhi to six - all the infections were detected over the last eight days as the number of COVID-19 positive people in the national capital jumped from 35 to 120.
The first to be infected was a doctor from a mohalla clinic -- he contracted it from a patient who also returned from Saudi Arabia. Around 900 people who came in contact with the doctors had to be quarantined. His wife, who is also a doctor, contracted the disease from him.
A doctor at the Delhi State Cancer Institute has also tested positive for coronavirus. The doctor at the Delhi State Cancer Institute had recently visited her brother and sister-in-law, who had returned from the UK. How the doctor at the Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel hospital got infected is not known.
Mumbai's Jaslok Hospital today shut down its Out-Patient Department after two nurses tested positive. The hospital said one of them had come in contact with a COVID-19 patient.
"All the medical staff who came in direct or indirect contact of the affected nurse and the connected patient have been identified and quarantined as per the protocol. We have conducted direct and indirect contact tracing and swab testing is in process," the hospital said.
The hospital is now accepting only emergency cases.
Besides, 15 medical staff members from Delhi's Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital have been quarantined after they got exposed to a COVID-19 patient. None of them have been declared positive so far.
The risk of infection from patients has pushed doctors to ask for better quality and adequate supply of protective gear.
On Monday, the Centre said it was trying to procure bulk quantities of such gear, called personal protective equipment (PPE), domestically and from South Korea and China.