Coronavirus COVID-19 Maharashtra: Mumbai Hospitals Worried About COVID-19 Patients Who Show No Symptoms

Hospitals in Mumbai are now grappling to come with a system to deal with asymptomatic COVID-19 patients as that has become a huge worry for most large hospitals after two of them had nurses or both nurses and doctors being infected through asymptomatic patients, who did not have travel or known contact history with a coronavirus positive patient at the time of admission. Now with over 1,000 cases in Maharashtra and nearly 650 of them in Mumbai, hospitals are grappling with this new challenge.

Healthcare workers who are battling the coronavirus pandemic are also worried about asymptomatic patients as these are patients who are admitted for other illnesses and do not show any symptoms of COVID-19. This is now a scenario that is being taken into consideration in the battle against infections of the novel coronavirus as hospitals ramp up testing and procure more protective equipment to ensure doctors, nurses and paramedic staff don't suffer.

Jaslok Hospital, one of Mumbai's premiere healthcare centres had to shut its outpatient department and new admissions after an asymptomatic patient tested positive for COVID-19, putting the hospital under stress as over 1,000 staff members, including doctors, nurses and staff had to be isolated and tested. 21 nurses and paramedic staff tested positive for coronavirus after coming into contact with a patient who was admitted for a heart ailment. The hospital says this is an unprecedented situation and it will now reopen on April 13 after ensuring everything is sanitised and safe.

Jitendra Haryan, the CEO of Jaslok Hospital, told NDTV, "Two weeks back we had a situation where a non-COVID-19 patient admitted on March 11, without any travel history or symptoms, was tested positive. So we had to trace all the connected employees, nurses and doctors. A few of them were found to be COVID-19-positive. We had to then widen the scope of tracing and testing. So far, in the last ten days, we have tested over 1,000 employees including nurses and doctors. We believe that this was the best method to deploy to ensure we are safe to start again."

The communicability of the coronavirus infection is a challenge for healthcare workers. At Wockhardt Hospital, another big hospital in Mumbai, the situation is much worse. The municipal authorities have declared the hospital a containment zone as it has a huge cluster of patients, over 50, with at least 40 nurses and three doctors infected.

A 70-year-old man who was admitted to the ICU tested positive and he later spread the infection to nurses who attended him. In a statement, Wockhardt Hospital said, "The hospital adheres to the highest global standards of infection and quality control. The source of the infection is identified as a 70-year-old patient who was admitted to the hospital on March 17 for a cardiac emergency. The patient was asymptomatic (showed no symptoms of COVID-19). On March 26, the patient developed cough, and was tested for COVID-19, which turned out positive. The hospital staff was unknowingly exposed to the infection in the time period. We are informing the healthcare sector at large not to be misled by asymptomatic patients."

"Our colleague nurses and the doctors identified as COVID-19-positive are presently being treated. The hospital is currently declared containment zone by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and we are closely working with the authorities," the hospital added.

According to a Maharashtra government report released on April 6, based on data collected a day earlier, of the 16,008 tested people, only 4 per cent or 635 were positive cases.

14,837 people tested negative and the results of 532 were awaited. But then came the worrying part. Among those who tested positive, 478 or 75 per cent were asymptomatic patients, many of them with no travel history or known contacts with coronavirus patients at the time of admission. And this is what the healthcare sector now has to grapple with after number of positive cases in Maharashtra crossed 1,100. The state has also recorded 72 deaths, some of which tested as COVID-19-positive cases after admission in hospitals.