Max told to share details of Covid patients admitted

Aditya Dev | TNN | Apr 22, 2020, 07:57 IST

Ghaziabad: The health department on Tuesday directed Max Hospital in Vaishali to inform it about all patients who are being treated for Covid-19 there.
In a letter to the hospital’s management, chief medical officer (CMO) NK Gupta said the department had come to know that Covid patients from other districts and states were being treated at the hospital, but their information was not being shared.
Gupta said protocol required hospitals to share all such information with the district surveillance officer on a regular basis. Sources said the letter was issued after the health department learnt that a woman from east Delhi had been admitted to Max, Vaishali, and had tested positive on Monday. No information on the woman was shared with the department, the letter said. A spokesperson for Max Hospital, however, clarified that the woman had tested positive at their hospital in Saket and the information had been shared with the Delhi government in keeping with ICMR guidelines.
“ICMR guidelines state that a lab which tests a Covid-19 sample positive is supposed to upload reports on the ICMR website as well as inform the district surveillance officer. This protocol was followed by Max Lab, Saket, which had tested the sample. The patient subsequently decided to pursue treatment at another Covid authorised hospital in Greater Noida, which is also required to report a Covid-19 admission to the local authorities. While Max Hospital, Vaishali, has no role to inform Ghaziabad authorities, we still informed the CMO ‘verbally’. The hospital acted as a sample collection centre,” the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, two resident doctors of Max, Vaishali, who recently tested positive and were admitted to the hospital’s Covid facility in Saket, were discharged on Monday. They were sent home in Vaishali and Gyan Khand 1.
The Max spokesperson said that in consultation with the Ghaziabad district authorities, the two doctors had been advised home quarantine for 14 days. This was confirmed by CMO Gupta.
“Both resident doctors were in close contact with each other and samples from both were collected within 48 hours of each other, which tested positive early last week. As per protocol, the district authorities were immediately informed and they were both shifted to our Covid-only facility at Max Hospital, Saket. After a week of quarantine at the facility, two consecutive samples were collected from both doctors within 24 hours, which tested negative and hence they were discharged,” he added.