NEW DELHI: Treating crowds of patients and frequent visits to Covid wards have taken a toll on doctors the frontline Covid warriors. A large number of doctors from government and private hospitals are down with Covid-19.
Due to this update, a severe crisis of doctors has erupted in the city, and as per the new guidelines of the Union Health Ministry, those doctors who tested positive will have to join duties, while wearing appropriate personal protective equipment if symptoms have subsided (except mild cough), and they are afebrile (without fever) for three successive days.
The guidelines have not been appreciated by the city doctors who say that post-infectious cough is still a huge risk and the fatigue which comes post Covid-19 will not let the doctors take care of the patients in the manner they are supposed to.
According to a senior resident doctor in Lady Hardinge Medical College who recently recovered from Covid, even the mild fever which he faced was not that weak in nature and hit him badly.
He said: “My symptoms started with flu, running nose, itchiness, and discomfort in the throat. Later, I developed a high fever of 103-104 and a severe headache. I was unable to stand on my feet and was bed-ridden for more than 18 hours.”
According to a senior resident working with Safdarjung Hospital, who got infected with Covid-19, he recalls not having faced any issue in the last two waves but this time the virus got him.
“I got vaccinated, but Omicron is a strong virus with high transmissibility. Thankfully, I don’t live with my family here, else it would have infected them,” he says.
According to these doctors, the issue is not about them getting infected with Covid-19, but that of less manpower.
The doctors in Delhi are working with 60 per cent capacity because of the delay in NEET PG counselling and increasing Covid-19 infected doctors.
“We can’t work from home with a laptop. We’ve to go to the hospital. But since I am down with Covid-19, my co-workers are handling my job which has put a lot of pressure on them,” says a doctor working with Kalawati Saran Children’s Hospital.
She says that since the doctors are short-staffed, the government has had to take stringent measures.
“Had the NEET PG counselling started in time, we wouldn’t have had to see such a day,” she adds.
Meanwhile, the doctors of Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital have written to the Directorate General of Health Services, asking them to scrap the new policy under which doctors will not be given quarantine facility after their Covid duties for the day.