Employees of publishing house - Navneet Education Limited - were also tested, from where nine turned out to be positive. (Representational)Maharashtra has reported a 16 per cent coronavirus positivity rate among healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses, staffers and hospital cleaners, which is the second-highest in the country after Telangana (18 per cent).
On Thursday, the Centre pulled up states with a high positivity rate of Covid-19 among healthcare workers and asked them to evaluate the situation. The other states and Union Territories with a high Covid-19 positivity rate are Delhi (14 per cent), Karnataka (13 per cent), Puducherry (12 per cent) and Punjab (11 per cent).
“We have drawn the attention of these states through the Ministry of Home Affairs. The issue highlights hospital infection practises. After all, we must raise the question how healthcare workers are getting infected. Is it the hospital, because that could be one reason, and if standard protection control is being followed or not,” Rajesh Bhushan, health secretary, Government of India, said at a press briefing Thursday.
Bhushan said they have advised a ‘buddy system’ under which two health workers will supervise each other’s donning and doffing procedure to minimise infection. He added states have been advised to monitor areas from where health workers come, and declare them containment zones if needed or contain the spread of the virus if local cases are found.
Dr Avinash Bhondwe, IMA Maharashtra president, said more Covid-19 cases were being noticed among government doctors and general practitioners. “General physicians are still not getting good quality personal protective equipment (PPE) kits and the government has not standardised rates for them,” he said.
In Maharashtra, till August 29, a total of 4,274 doctors with the IMA were infected and 408 had died. The death rate among medical practitioners is higher at 9.5 per cent than the normal population. However, there is no government data to show how many health workers in the public and private sectors have been infected, but the actual figure is expected to be much higher.
Maharashtra also accounts for maximum overall cases (24.7 per cent) in the country. Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh together account for 60 per cent of India’s Covid-19 caseload.
Health secretary Bhushan, however, said the week-on-week growth rate in active cases has reduced in these states. As on September 2, Maharashtra had shown a 6.8 per cent decline since August 13. In the same period, Tamil Nadu showed 23.9 per cent decline in active cases, UP 17.1 per cent, Karnataka 16.1 per cent, and Andhra Pradesh 13.7 per cent.
India has 2,792 Covid-19 cases and 49 deaths per million population. Global average stands at 3,359 cases and 111 deaths per million.
Bhushan said people need to follow “Covid-19 appropriate behaviour”. “Till a vaccine is launched, social distancing is the only social vaccine we have,” he said.
Indian Council of Medical Research director-general, Dr Balram Bhargava, said immunity studies are underway to assess how long antibodies persist in the body. “For respiratory viruses, flu vaccination is given every year because immunity lasts up to a year. For this virus, we are looking at it as of now,” Bhargava said.