Fifty eight doctors and nurses at the cardiac wing of the Ernakulam General Hospital have gone into quarantine after a patient tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Tuesday. Following this, no new admissions will be taken at the cardiac wing of the hospital.
There have been no new admissions at the general medicine department of the hospital too, since a woman admitted there had tested positive earlier. The General Hospital is a non-COVID centre and does not treat patients who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. However, the woman – from Chellanam -- had come to the hospital with pneumonia and had not disclosed her travel history. When she showed symptoms of the disease, she was tested for the novel coronavirus and the result came positive, following which she was moved to the Kalamassery Medical College.
The new case is of a patient who was understood to have had contact with another person who tested positive. The Corona Control Centre informed the hospital about this, and the patient was tested for coronavirus. It was on Monday that the result came back positive, and the patient was moved to the Kalamassery hospital.
Ernakulam Collector Suhas said on Tuesday, “The hospital is not fully shut, only one department has been shut and it will be opened tomorrow. Those who have come into contact with the patient have been told to go into quarantine. But there is back-up staff, so there is no problem in opening the department tomorrow.”
He said that on an average the district is doing about 950 to 1000 tests a day apart from the antigen and antibody tests. “About 250 tests are done at the Kalamassery Medical College, 70 tests at three private hospitals, 600 tests per day in two medical labs,” Suhas said.
The Collector said that antigen testing has started in 12 major government hospitals and it will be done on whoever is symptomatic. “Antigen kits will also be provided to NABL (National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories)-accredited private hospitals. Our strategy is to identify clusters and contain the area and do maximum testing. A new team at the district level has been formed to track the cases whose source of infection is not known yet,” said the Collector, at a time when there are talks of a triple lockdown being planned for the district.
Minister VS Sunil Kumar said on Monday that as of now, there is no question of community spread.
Twenty one people from Ernakulam tested positive on Monday and 16 on Tuesday. There are 215 active cases in Ernakulam and 13,914 people are under observation.