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Mamata govt asks hospitals to ensure faster test results
State chief secretary Rajiva Sinha and top health department officials met principals and senior doctors of medical colleges and hospitals on Friday and issued the instructions.
The West Bengal government has directed hospitals to ensure faster Covid-19 test results as part of a series of directions issued to them for better handling of the pandemic. The directions were issued hours after a central interministerial team sent to the state to assess the handling of the Covid-19 situation raised concerns over the testing, treatment of patients, and sought an explanation.
The number of Covid-19 cases rose to 571 in the state on Saturday with 38 new cases while the death toll stood at 18.
State chief secretary Rajiva Sinha and top health department officials met principals and senior doctors of medical colleges and hospitals on Friday and issued the instructions. The hospitals have been instructed that no patient shall be refused treatment and collection or swab samples and their results should be done in 12 hours. The testing process currently takes over two days.
The government instructed the hospitals to make ambulances available for referral of patients to other facilities and that dead bodies be shifted from wards without delay.
The instructions came after one of the IMCT teams visited Kolkata’s Bangur Hospital, where a patient recorded the video of a body lying on a bed. The video went viral on social media and prompted the state government to ban the use of mobile phones inside Covid-19 wards.
The government has instructed hospitals to ensure that doctors working in emergency and outpatient departments wear protective gear and the areas where they work and clothes they change are sanitized on a regular basis.
There was no official media briefing on Saturday and officials refused to comment on the new instructions.
Sinha on Friday said the health department’s audit committee formed on April 3 had reviewed 57 deaths of people, who had tested positive for Covid-19. It added the panel concluded that only 18 deaths were caused by the virus. The remaining 39 were “due to severe comorbidity” and that Covid-19 was not the immediate cause of these deaths.
“We have been asking the audit committee to submit a consolidated report as a lot of questions have been raised... The report could have come three days ago. We got it today… We are not in a game of proving anything,” said Sinha when asked whether the report was a response to the central teams.
Dr Kaushik Chaki, secretary, West Bengal Doctors’ Forum, said the tussle between the state and the Centre is uncalled for because the interest of the patients should be the only priority. “However, we strongly feel that the audit committee in its present form should be scrapped and its terms of reference changed.” Reacting to the instructions, Dr Chaki said doctors have been raising most of these issues for over a month.
One of the two Interministerial teams sent to West Bengal highlighted several anomalies in its letter to Sinha on Friday. They included a waiting period of at least five days for test results of patients in isolation wards, the possibility of dead bodies lying on beds in wards for hours, and the lack of social distancing at hospitals. The observations were based on an inspection of two hospitals in Kolkata.
West Bengal is among the states where the Centre has deputed interministerial teams to probe perceived lapses in efforts to control Covid-19 and violations of lockdown regulations.
