NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday said the doctors and paramedic staff of small nursing homes have also provided treatment against Covid-19 to thousands of patients during the first and second waves of the pandemic and creating any distinction for grant of ex-gratia between them and other medical practitioners working in hospitals requisitioned by the government is not justified.
The high court said that only because some nursing homes may not have been requisitioned on account of their capacity, does not take away the fact that the doctors and paramedic staff working at such nursing homes were also exposing themselves to the risk of contracting Covid-19 infection and suffering death on
that account.
“It is a well-known fact that at the peak of pandemic, the small nursing homes were also providing treatment against Covid-19 to thousands of residents and if their numbers are put together, they may well exceed the number of beds available in government hospitals and hospitals which were requisitioned by the government for treatment of the virus,” a bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh said.
The high court was dealing with a matter relating to the death of a doctor in June 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic. Doctor Harish Kumar was serving at the New Life Hospital in GTB Nagar and was on COVID duty, the plea filed by her wife has said.