E-Paper
Office of Ghaziabad CMO sealed after two staff test positive, Covid-19 cases cross 850
Ghaziabad: The office of chief medical officer (CMO) of the district was sealed on Saturday for two days after two staff members tested positive for Covid-19. The
Ghaziabad: The office of chief medical officer (CMO) of the district was sealed on Saturday for two days after two staff members tested positive for Covid-19. The office will now be sanitized as per protocols, CMO Dr NK Gupta said, adding that he has directed for sampling of all the staff members.
“One of the two staff members is a clerk while the other is a driver. They showed symptoms and their test reports came positive for the infection. As a result, we have sealed the office for two days and sanitization is being taken up,” Gupta said.
The office of the CMO is located inside the premises of the Combined District Hospital in Sanjay Nagar, which is now a dedicated L2 hospital.
Earlier, the district women’s hospital had to shut on June 17 after Covid-19 patients were found. Later, tests of five doctors, including chief medical superintendent, and six nurses and four other staff members were conducted. The hospital was also closed for the same reason on May 25.
“The sampling of doctors, staff nurses and other employees was done on June 18. These employees had attended the OPD, where patients were found positive. However, we are yet to get the reports,” said Dr Deepa Tyagi, chief medical superintendent of the hospital.
Meanwhile, the health department is now focussing on more sampling through the surveillance teams and has deployed a team each at Vaishali, Khoda, IMS college Dasna and Sanjay Nagar hospital.
“The surveillance teams have been asked to focus more on people who have symptoms of severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) and influenza-like illness (ILI). The teams will check up patients with such symptoms and send them to the nearest sampling centre. The idea is to detect such cases at the earliest and get them medical treatment before the cases get into a critical state,” CMO said.
On Saturday, the tally of Covid-19 cases crossed 800 with addition of 56 new cases. This is the biggest single day spike in number of Covid-19 positive cases in Ghaziabad, health officials said.
The total positive cases stood at 853, while the number of deaths was 42 which included Saturday’s two deaths. The total number of patients discharged so far stands at 504.
“Till Saturday we have 42 deaths, of which 16 have taken place in Ghaziabad, 14 at Meerut and two each in Delhi and Noida,” CMO added.
Out of 56 new cases, three were from Modinagar, five from delta colonies of Surya Nagar, Brij Vihar and Ramprastha, five from Shalimar Garden, seven from Indirapuram, two from Vasundhara and one from Vaishali, among others.
In a period of 20 days since June 1, 548 positive cases and 38 deaths have been added to the overall tally, the officials said.
“Since the number of cases is on the rise, the CM has directed for better work plan for NCR areas of the state. He has also directed to strengthen health care infrastructure, surveillance system and also laid stress on increasing the random sampling in these areas,” said Awanish Awasthi, UP’s additional chief secretary (home).
The UP CM had also sent special officers to 11 sensitive districts, including Ghaziabad and Gautam Budh Nagar, to assess the Covid-19 situation. The two nodal officers sent to Ghaziabad have also completed their week-long visit on Saturday.
“The officers will be sending a confidential report to the state government and the report is likely to highlight the shortcomings they observed in Ghaziabad and corrective measures which are needed to be taken up to tackle the Covid-19 spread,” said an officer from the Ghaziabad administration.
