NEW DELHI: Services in emergency wards, including flu clinic, and three OPDs at the civic-run Hindu Rao Hospital will resume from Monday, authorities said on Sunday. The largest municipal hospital run by the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) was closed down on Saturday after a nurse at the facility tested positive for COVID-19.
NDMC Commissioner Varsha Joshi said that complete sanitisation at the hospital premises was done on Sunday. "Contact tracing of 52 healthcare workers who have been in contact with the staff nurse has been completed. Incase of seven persons who came in contact, collection of samples has already been done and they are currently in institutional quarantine. Rest are in home isolation or quarantine and their sample collection will start tomorrow," she said.
The hospital will resume services from Monday in casualty and emergency wards, including the flu clinic, and the three OPDs (Gynaecology, Pediatrics, Medicine) with restricted entry of patients and attendants, officials said.
About 170 patients are being looked after at the hospital, who continued to be at the facility since its closing down on Saturday, they said, adding that admitted patients are being looked after. "We have no evidence regarding where the nurse got infected from, in a lot of cases nowadays across the city there is no established contact history," Joshi said.
Asked about the allegation by some of her co-workers that the nurse, who tested positive, had continued to work despite showing symptoms, Joshi said, "We have asked for a full report." She had on Saturday said, "There appears to be definite negligence at some level here,", adding, "we will have a thorough inquiry into this aspect".
The commissioner said that Hindu Rao Hospital has 50 isolation beds earmarked for use when the Delhi government sends any coronavirus patient.