BENGALURU: The NIMHANS Psychiatry emergency and ICU building was sealed down after a 34-year-old woman who was in preoperative care tested positive for coronavirus on Saturday evening.
Her swab was taken before going into operation. She was placed in the holding area before that and awaiting admission.
After being shifted to Victoria Hospital, four patients adjacent to her were deemed high risk contacts and were quarantined in another block, 20 others were shifted to a different block as precautionary measure.
"Another 30-year-old woman who had come to the Neurosurgery block for elective surgery of meningioma, was kept in preoperative holding ward, turned COVID-19 positive, as the person was not moving around and confined to bed, no one will be quarantined. Seven patients who were in same ward are under observation and after 5-7 days, their swab will be taken for testing," said Dr. Shashidhara HN, specialist grade psychiatrist and resident medical officer at NIMHANS.
He also added that sanitization, surface and environment cleaning was done as per standard protocol and that all health workers were wearing PPE kits, eliminating chances of cross contamination.
Psychiatric ICU services were temporarily affected but as the institute has multiple blocks which are separated geographically, the services were relocated without hindrance, he further said.
Patients are kept at a distance from each other, so there is less chance of the virus spreading, the institute said.
Apart from these two cases, a third case of a 32-year-old female hospital assistant, working in another psychiatry ward too came to light.
"She turned positive and was shifted to Victoria Hospital. 10 patients and 10 other health care workers of that ward are being monitored. Until now two psychiatry and one neurosurgey patient, as well as 10 staff
have tested positive for the virus. The staff include seven women and three men, of which three people were inter-state returnees," Dr. Shashidhara explained.