City’s vet hosp falls prey to Covid

A second veterinary hospital in the city has fallen victim to Covid-19 with two of the hospital staff testing positive for the disease on Friday and the facility being shut down as a precaution.

The rest of the staff at the Government Superspecialty Veterinary hospital at Narayanguda, 17 in all, have been asked to quarantine themselves at home.

The veterinary hospital in Rajendranagar had previously been closed for a few days after detection of a Covid-19 case in the family of a staffer there.

The Narayanguda hospital will be sanitised and till then services are being restricted, Dr Parameshwer Reddy, the district veterinary and animal husbandry officer, said.

Earlier, there was a similar shutdown of the veterinary hospital run by the P.V. Narsimha Rao Telangana Veterinary University on June 16. It resumed services after three days to attend to emergency cases.

Hospital in-charge and professor at the veterinary university, Dr E.L. Chandrasekhar, said, “The hospital was closed as a precautionary measure after an employee’s family member was found Covid-19-positive. The facility has since been sanitised and we resumed services but treatment is restricted only to emergency services.” He also said, “As the number of Covid-19 cases are on the rise, our committee is meeting to discuss whether to continue the services or to close.”

Though the veterinary department has asked the government that its staff at all its hospitals and in the field be provided with PPE kits and equipment to protect themselves from possible exposure to the Coronavirus from people bringing animals for treatment, there has been no response so far.

“Even we are frontline health warriors,” said Dr Madhusudhan, assistant director of animal husbandry, “but nobody seems to care for us.”