Mumbai hospital sealed as 3 doctors, 26 nurses test positive

Tribune News Service
Mumbai, April 6

The Maharashtra Government will soon file a first information report (FIR) against the management of 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, a representative body of healthcare personnel, alleged that the hospital management and the BMC were underplaying the total number of people who have tested positive for the virus.

According to the UNA, more than 50 people, including 40 nurses originally from Kerala, have 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 organisation Jan Swasthya Abhiyan said in a joint statement.

According to the nurses’ body, two nurses attending to 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 have tested positive for the virus. However, several more people have been 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. The office of Wockhardt Hospital’s chairman Habil Khorakiwala refused to comment.