All Delhi health workers, doctors treating Covid-19 patients to be tested

Coronavirus Update: A Delhi government order also directed that samples of all persons admitted across government hospitals with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) be tested within the 24 hours.

All health care workers in the national capital who are attending to Covid-19 patients will be tested for the deadly, fast-spreading infection, the Delhi government has instructed.

File photo of doctors at a Delhi hospital checking patients for symptoms of coronavirus before they are allowed to enter the main building. (Sanchit Khanna/HT File Photo)

“All health care facility workers/doctors who are directly involved in the treatment of Covid-19 positive patients and staff or doctors directly involved in drawing samples at the designated sample collection centre” will be tested in the next 24 hours, according to an order issued late Wednesday night.

Also, the order directed that samples of all persons admitted across government hospitals with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) be tested within the 24 hours.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (IMCR) changed the testing protocol last week to include all SARI patients – even those without a history of travel or contact with a positive case — to track any silent, possible community transmission.

Community transmission takes place when a person tests positive for the disease but doctors are not able to trace the source of the infection. It indicates undiagnosed and often asymptomatic people are unknowingly causing infection, which makes it difficult to break the chain of transmission.

So far, 36 people have tested positive for Covid-19, caused by the Sars-Cov-2 virus, in Delhi and one has died. All of them either had a history of travel or of coming in contact with someone who has tested positive.

The samples of health care workers from Delhi government hospitals and those of SARI patients will be collected by five designated facilities — Lok Nayak, Rajiv Gandhi, Deen Dayal Upadhyay, Guru TEg Bahadur, and Baba Saheb Ambedkar hospitals.

“This is a one-time exercise as of now, but the testing of health care workers may be done again as and when required,” said an official of Delhi’s health department who did not want to be named.

For central government-run hospitals such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Safdarjung hospital, samples will be collected by the National Centre for Disease Control, the order said.

“All hospitals under the government of India like AIIMS, Safdarjung, Ram Manohar Lohia, Lady Hardinge Medical College, and Army Research and Referral hospital are requested to contact NCDC to collect the samples and test it at their facility. It is again reiterated that the samples of all these categories be sent to NCDC within 24 hours,” the order said.