Four medical staff among 7 new cases in Anantapur

312 samples collected, results of 112 still awaited

09/04/2020, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT,ANANTAPUR

The Government General Hospital in Anantapur. R.V.S. PrasadR_V_S_PRASAD

A 70-year-old man from Kalyandurg in Anantapur district became the fifth victim of COVID-19 in the State.

Four people working at the Government General Hospital, including two doctors, are among seven persons who have tested positive for COVID-19 in Anantapur on Wednesday, according to Collector Gandham Chandrudu. With the seven new cases, the total number of positive cases has shot up from six to 13 in the district. District Medical and Health Officer K.V.N.S. Anil Kumar said at a press conference that six of the seven new positive cases were due to local transmission from the 58-year-old patient from Hindupur, who died while being treated at the GGH here on April 4. Two doctors and two paramedical staff, who attended to the patient before it was known that he was suffering from COVID-19, tested positive. The patient’s wife and son also tested positive. The seventh person who tested positive hails from Kalyandurg and had travelled to Delhi.

Hunt on for 65 contacts

“It was the negligence of the GGH staff in not suspecting the patient to be COVID-19 positive, which led to the spread of the infection. The patient was a regular visitor to GGH with bronchial problems and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which led to complacency among the medical staff,” Dr. Anil Kumar said.

The son of the deceased COVID-19 patient is a Registered Medical Practitioner at Hindupur and had treated 65 other patients after contracting the virus and had also treated his own father, it is learnt. The district administration is now scrambling to locate all those who came in contact with the RMP. The district so far has collected 312 samples, 13 of which have tested positive and 87 negative. Results of 112 samples are awaited. With the capacity of Anantapur VDRL Laboratory at the Government Medical College being limited, the authorities have sent some samples to SVIMS, Tirupati and are in touch with a private laboratory called VIMTA Labs in Hyderabad to get more samples tested there if needed, Dr. Anil Kumar said.

‘No dearth of masks’

The Collector said that there was no dearth of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) for doctors and paramedical staff attending to suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients. The district currently has 1,711 PPEs, 3,241 N-95 masks, 53,692 normal masks, 2.17 lakh surgical gloves, 90 HIV surgical kits and 4,226 delivery kits in addition to others. All these have been positioned in various places to enable immediate replenishment, he said.