Since the first case of Covid-19 was reported in Ghaziabad in March till September 5, 140 health care workers (HCWs) were infected with the disease, of which 24% were on Covid duty and none died.

Officials from the health department said that they had not acquired it while on active Covid duty, which is when HCWs must enter Covid isolation wards wearing personal protective equipment (PPE). This would imply that HCWs were more at risk from asymptomatic untested patients more than they would be while dealing with confirmed patients.

“Two doctors who were infected and on Covid related duties– one at a quarantine centre, and the other at the Delhi airport, were not on active duty at the Covid isolation wards. In one of our L-3 (tertiary care) acquired hospitals, five doctors who were on active duty too got the infection, but we believe they acquired it while performing other duties,” said Dr. NK Gupta, Ghaziabad chief medical officer.

HCWs are at the highest risk of being infected due to the close proximity with people and are tested regularly. These workers include those who are on surveillance duty, lab technicians deployed to test people, doctors and other hospital staff.

“The low positivity in our doctors is due to prevalence and adherence to the infection prevention protocols. We are continuing with precautions. The others who acquired infection were in non-Covid departments. The major share of acquiring infection was among the health care staff members who were deployed for non-Covid duties at non-Covid health facilities,” said Dr Gupta.

While five HCW each were found to be positive in April and May, 58 had the infection in June, 56 in July, and 16 in August. The spike in cases came at a time when the healthcare facilities opened up for OPDs and Covid hospitals had to deal with high number of cases which had started coming in after unlock 1 from June 8.

“In our hospital only three of 50 nurses, and two other staff acquired infection but it is likely that they acquired it from outside. No doctors in our hospital got infected with Covid-19. It is due to strict schedule which we had prepared so that a doctor gets exposure to any patient only for six hours. So we strictly adhered to the roster and made use of safe delivery kits which were available with us initially when PPE kits were less in supply,” said Dr Deepa Tyagi, chief medical superintendent of district women’ hospital which is a non-Covid facility.

The officials of the L-2 (moderate care) hospital at Sanjay Nagar said that none of their doctors acquired infection during the entire period of the pandemic so far.

“None of our doctors acquired infection while on duty at the hospital. So far, we have only nine nurses and ward boys, who got infected while on duty. We have been stressing on proper sanitisation, use of masks and strict compliance of the social distancing norms,” said Dr Sanjay Teotia, chief medical superintendent of the L2 category Covid hospital. “We made strict compliance of infection prevention training and our major focus was on use of PPE kits. There is specific procedure to wear and take out the PPE kits and any lapses could pass on infection. So, every staff was provided training in this regard and we even sanitized the PPE kits to keep away infection.”

The state government as well as the district administration has laid stress on strict adherence to infection prevention protocols so that the frontline healthcare workers do not acquire in times of the pandemic.