In a worrying development, three nurses engaged in COVID-19 duty in Victoria Hospital in Bengaluru have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. The three patients were among the 35 persons who had tested positive on Monday from Bengaluru Urban district.
A senior nursing staff in the hospital told TNM, “In this instance too, the three nurses (two women, one man) have tested positive on the last day of their quarantine. All of them were asymptomatic.” Another nurse from the hospital had earlier tested positive for the virus, on the last day of her quarantine period.
According to current norms followed by the hospital, a batch of 12 nurses work for a certain period of time and are allowed to go home after they finish a 14-day quarantine period. On the second last day of their quarantine period, they are also mandatorily tested before they are allowed to go home homes.
This incident of nurses testing positive despite having used personal protective equipment and having taken all precautions has left the medical administrators in the state baffled.
In another development, a staff worker in National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) also tested positive for the virus. This the seventh staff member from the hospital to contract the infection.
Dr KS Meena, Media Cell at NIMHANS, said, “The lady who tested positive today is 24 years old and is a swachata worker at the engineering section at NIMHANS. Her sister was one of the six ladies who had tested positive three days back. The lady came in contact with her sister before the sister was tested.”
As earlier reported, six women staffers of the hospital had tested positive last week. All these six staffers were in institutional quarantine as they had come in contact with an infected patient.
In total 36 persons were put in institutional quarantine after the patient had tested positive. Other patients who were present in the same ward were also shifted to isolation wards