The State government on Wednesday informed the Madras High Court that personal protective equipment (PPE) had been distributed to all healthcare providers involved in arresting the spread of COVID-19, depending upon the nature of their work.
They were being continuously educated about the need to follow basic preventive public health measures, it said.
Last week, Justices Vineet Kothari and Pushpa Sathyanarayana had called for a status report from the government on a public interest litigation petition filed by advocate S. Jimraj Milton. Accordingly, the report, filed on Tuesday, stated that healthcare providers had been divided into three risk categories — high, moderate and low.
High-risk doctors, staff nurses, paramedics in critical care management, ambulance staff involved in transportation of severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) patients and lab technicians involved in sample collection and testing had been provided with a full complement of PPE kits, the report said.
The full complement contained a triple-layer face mask, a gown with a hood, shoe covers, hand gloves and protective eye gear.
Moderate-risk doctors, nurses, paramedics in clinical management, sanitary/laundry staff at hospitals and ambulance staff attending to emergencies had only been provided with N95 masks and gloves. Further, doctors, health inspectors, village health nurses, anganwadi workers, the police, sanitary workers and revenue officials had been given triple-layer masks, the report read.
It stated that a 14-day work-free quarantine period was provided to all healthcare providers, including sanitary staff, serving at COVID-19 treatment and management facilities. As many as 60 training sessions had been conducted so far by doctors from the Community Medicine Department to teach health workers how to properly wear and remove PPE, and 3,744 healthcare providers had attended these sessions, it added.
The report went on to state that 2.19 lakh PPE kits, 1.54 lakh N-95 masks and 23.52 lakh triple-layer masks were available in the State, as of May 8. Unfortunately, a few healthcare providers at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Chennai had recently tested positive for COVID-19, and this had led to the temporary closure of a postgraduate hostel block, it noted.
“But there was no callousness on the part of the administration that can be attributed to some HCPs (healthcare providers) acquiring the infection…It is submitted that much greater attention is being bestowed and a vigorous check mechanism is being made to ensure proper implementation for safety,” the Health Department’s report said. After taking it on file, the judges asked the litigant to file his response to the report by Monday.