At least 25 hospital staff, including 19 nurses, from the city’s Ruby Hall Clinic have tested positive for COVID-19 over the past fortnight and have been quarantined in isolation facilities, said hospital authorities.
Bomi Bhote, Chief Executive Officer, Ruby Hall Clinic, said that 19 nurses, three support staff and three clinical assistants had tested positive during tests that were conducted on 1,000 of the hospital staffers over the last 15 days.
“All of them are asymptomatic and in a stable condition. They have been quarantined in a dedicated COVID-19 building on the hospital premises and all their primary contacts have been traced and tested,” Mr. Bhote said, adding that the case of one of the hospital staffers, who came from the highly-infected zone of Kasarwadi in the city, prompted the authorities to conduct tests on their own staff.
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On April 12, a 45-year-old nurse with the Ruby Hall Clinic had tested positive. The nurse, who worked in the hospital’s general ward, had returned from leave when she began displayed virus-like symptoms. Her throat swab sample test had returned positive.
Soon after, four nurses from Sassoon Hospital had tested positive between April 14 and 15. A radiologist practicing in Shikrapur, around 40 km from Pune city, too, had, tested positive of April 14.
Earlier this month, more than 40 doctors and nurses of a medical college and hospital in Pimpri had been quarantined after an autorickshaw driver, who had been undergoing treatment at that hospital for accident injuries, had tested positive. The test results of all 42 medical personnel had returned negative.