NEW DELHI: The doctors across the national capital have expressed their uneasiness with the latest guidelines by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare which has decreed that the health care workers who have been exposed to Covid-19 cases will continue to work wearing appropriate PPE, and test themselves at day 5 of the exposure or if symptoms develop.
According to the guidelines, the health care workers (HCWs) can resume duties while wearing PPEs if symptoms have subsided (except mild cough), and they are not feverish for three successive days. “Exposed shall continue to work wearing appropriate PPE and test themselves at day 5 of the exposure or if symptoms develop anytime within 14 days from the day of exposure,” said the guidelines released by the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.
This has agitated the already short-staffed doctors who have been working in 60 per cent capacity amid the rising number of doctors testing positive to the virus. “Those who frame guidelines should come and work in the hospitals, especially in Covid wards and then make rules for us. Were the doctors, nurses consulted before the authorities framed these guidelines?” asks a doctor deployed at a Covid ward in a government hospital.
In the second wave, the doctors were deployed for 15 days in Covid wards post which they were being given a quarantine time of 10 days. However, as per the new guidelines, this has been done away with.
Meanwhile, at least 1,500 doctors in the national capital have tested Covid-19 positive including hospitals like AIIMS, Safdarjung, RML, Lady Hardinge, and Lok Nayak.
“The government is not understanding what we are going through. Those doctors who are testing Covid positive also have families. How can we let our families, our parents get exposed to the virus if we will not get an isolation facility?” asked a doctor working with Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.
Meanwhile, in another incident, the Employee State Insurance Corporation Hospital in Faridabad has issued a circular, according to which, the health care workers will have to take permission before undergoing an RT PCR test and will have to pay Rs 1,500 to get the test conducted.