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Covid warriors battle dehydration and heat while screening residents in Chandigarh’s containment zones
Undaunted by tough conditions, they are letting work hours stretch from 18 to 19 hours and have not taken a single day off or seen other family members
Many get dehydrated, some faint as the summer heat intensifies, but there’s no stopping Chandigarh’s healthcare workers. Clad in blue protective gear from head to toe, dripping with sweat, they remain undaunted, focused only on screening patients at the city’s hotspots, Bapu Dham and Sector 30.
Work hours stretch from 18 to 19 hours, and many have not taken a single day off or seen other family members.
Days without a break
A valiant fighter with 40% disability, municipal corporation (MC) official Gagandeep Sharma has worked at a stretch from March 17. A team coordinator, he sends workers for contact tracing and then compiles data. “How can I ask for an off while my boss (Anil Garg, additional commissioner, MC) is also working without a break,” he says.
Sharma recalls the call he received on April 24 at 10.30 pm about one person testing positive in Bapu Dham Colony. “Two teams that I alerted and sent to the colony had quarantined 40 to 50 people by 1:30am. By the next day all 190 contacts had been quarantined.”
A fireman now assigned work to trace contacts of Covid-19 patients, Satyendra says he had returned home from work, washed his clothes and was about to sit for dinner when he got the alert. “By 11pm we were in Bapu Dham and had quarantined at least nine houses,” he says. He finished dinner after getting back home at 2:30am.
Living in separate section of his house, Satyendra communicates with his family through video calls. His parents back in the village call him three to four times day. He misses them.
Screening 25,000 people in two days
“We were concerned after hearing about the infections in Bapu Dham Colony,” says Dr Vandana Bhatia, medical officer at the Sector 26 Civil Dispensary.
With the support of Dr G Dewan, director, health services, she says her team managed to screen over 25,000 people there in two days. Now 58 have tested positive.
Temperatures were high. “Two to three girls (health workers) fainted because of dehydration. A man urging people to get screened, fainted,” Dr Bhatia adds.
The next day he was back at work.
First, health workers screened over a 100 buildings with 20-25 persons each on two days .
Then they were asked to screen the entire Bapu Dham Colony, covering over 25,000 people. The next day, at 7am, 75 to 80 health workers were at Dr Bhatia’s dispensary and given maps of areas they were to cover and protection kits.
“We had to shout to enable people living on second and third floors to hear us asking them to get screened. Many did not cooperate till the police were called. A woman said we were creating a nuisance by shouting and disturbing their sleeping children. I was shocked,” says Dr Bhatia.
While she spoke to Hindustan Times praising her team, they had started screening residents of Chandigarh’s second hotspot, Sector 30, where 20 people have tested positive.
At home, she cannot meet her mother-in-law, in her 80s, because of health risks. Her husband, however, refuses to stay apart from her. “He makes me tea when I go back,” she smiles.
