Mumbai hospital management to be probed after 3 doctors, 26 nurses test positive for coronavirus

Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, April 6

The Maharashtra government will soon file a first information report (FIR) against the management of the private Wockhardt Hospital in Mumbai after 26 nurses and three doctors tested positive for Covid-19 virus over the past week.

Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani said the hospital management appeared to be negligent after a 70 year-old patient

admitted for heart surgery tested positive for the virus. “The executive health officer of the BMC will conduct a probe into the

incident,” Kakani said.

Meanwhile, the United Nurses Association (UNA), a representative body of health care personnel, alleged that the hospital management and the BMC were underplaying the total number of people who had tested positive for the virus. According to the UNA, more than 50 people, including 40 nurses originally from Kerala, had contracted the virus.

“Nurses have not been given access to their own reports. Those who were quarantined in the hostel were moved to the Covid ward,” UNA and another representative organization Jan Swasthya Abhiyan said in a joint statement.

According to the nurses’ body, two nurses attending on the patient who was diagnosed with Covid-19 first tested positive.

Subsequently, other personnel in the hospital also tested positive.

At least two nurses have been admitted to other hospitals in a critical condition, according to the UNA.

BMC officials, however, maintained that only 29 people had tested positive for the virus. However, several more people have tested

and their reports were yet to be received, the civic body said. The 26 nurses and the three doctors who tested positive were moved out of

Wockhardt hospital and admitted to various places across Mumbai.

Wockhard Hospital has now been declared a ‘containment zone’ with no one allowed to enter or exit the premises. At least 270 people

including patients, medical personnel and support staff are still present in the building, according to civic officials.

Kakani said swabs of those present in the hospital premises have been sent for tests.

The office of Wockhardt Hospitals chairman Habil Khorakiwala refused to comment on the incident. Employees answering the hospital’s board number only said that emergency services were not functional and the Out Patient Department has been shut.