Quarantine period cut to one day, doctors at BMC hospitals flag risk to non-COVID patients

Resident doctors who are working in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)-run hospitals in Mumbai have criticised the civic body's move to allow only one day of quarantine after working in a COVID- facility before resuming their non-COVID duty.

The doctors, according to a report by the Indian Express, have said that returning to non-COVID wards immediately after working in a COVID facility would make people they interact with susceptible to the infection.

According to a circular issued by BMC on September 7, doctors working in COVID ward need to rejoin work in non-COVID facilities after only a one-day break. According to the report, in hospitals such as Sion and KEM, doctors are working on 10-day duty before they get one day off, while in Nair hospital, doctors are working for seven days straight before they get a

one-day break.

Moreover, according to the report, doctors who have in fact tested positive for the disease have not been allowed enough rest either.

"I had cough, and acute body pain. I was allowed only three days' leave because of symptoms and was forced to join back in BKC centre despite weakness," said a 29-year-old resident doctor at Sion hospital's pharmacology department who was tested positive last week after she was forced to rejoin work despite displaying symptoms.

"The quarantine period is too short. For two days I worked with my colleagues putting them at risk of exposure," the doctor, now admitted to the Seven Hills Hospital after she developed a fever, said.

"The routine OPDs have started, other departments are diverting their doctors from COVID wards to those OPDs. Medicine department doctors are getting overworked and have no time to take breaks even after 10 days," a third-year resident doctor at KEM hospital said, adding that they have been unofficially told to work without a break for the next one month.

Another doctor told the newspaper that a one-day break after COVID duty, when the incubation period of the virus is known to be four to seven days, means that general patients, too, will be at risk.

"Earlier we did not know much about the infection so we allowed seven-day work and seven-day quarantine. Now that we know how to protect against it, we have reduced the quarantine period," Additional municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani said.

According to the newspaper, at least 147 resident doctors in KEM, 124 in Sion and 110 in Nair hospital have been infected by the virus till date.