30 per cent health workers in Lucknow are Covid positive

Lucknow: More than 30 per cent of the health workers in Lucknow have tested positive for Covid. These include doctors, nurses, technicians, ward boys and administrative officials at major Covid hospitals.

With this, the Covid services at various hospitals have been adversely affected.

A senior doctor at the King George’s Medical University , where 40 doctors had tested positive in a day, said, “The disease is so infectious that every time a team goes on 14-day Covid duty, nearly one-fourth of them return with the infection.”

He said that while many of them are under home isolation, some with comorbidities have been admitted to hospital.

At Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences, at least 600 out of 2,000 staff members are Covid-positive.

“Around 30 per cent of the staff is infected. The non-Covid team are also getting infected while identifying Covid patients,” said RMLIMS spokesperson Dr Shrikesh Singh.

He further said, “We have almost completely vaccinated our staff and are asking them to use protective gear while working.”

A similar situation prevails in the Balrampur Hospital where, in the past 72 hours, at least 24 staff members, including 15 doctors, have tested positive.

The testing unit has been shut for 48 hours for sanitization,” said Dr V K Pandey, nodal officer for Covid facility at Balrampur Hospital.

What makes the situation worse is the fact that the inflow of patients has increased manifold while the workforce has gone down.