Senior Congress leader and party general secretary K.C. Venugopal on Monday wrote to Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan demanding urgent intervention from the Centre in ensuring Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to the doctors, nurses and health worker who are in the frontline in the battle against the novel coronavirus or COVID-19.

The emergence of hospitals in Delhi and Mumbai as clusters of transmission is a pointer to the ‘alarming’ shortage of the PPE, he noted.

“The growing number of doctors, nurses and health workers with infections underscored the need for ensuring protective gear, masks and hazmat suits. In many instances, the healthcare workers got infected while attending to patients without securing themselves with PPE.”

In the letter, Mr. Venugopal also stressed on a protective protocol to avoid such cluster transmission among the health workers. Any failure in this direction would have catastrophic impact on our collective fight against transmission and treatment.

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Noting that there has been an increase in the mortality rate among the NRIs from COVID-19 cases, he asked the Health Minister to take all possible assistance through embassies.

Proper control rooms and emergency medical teams co-ordinating with the respective governments may be constituted in the embassies to provide urgent medical care to the people in need, he said.