NOW, GMCH-32 TO TEST ALL PATIENTS FOR COVID-19

CHANDIGARH:The Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Sector 32, will be testing all patients for Covid-19 as a measure to ensure its staffers don’t pick up the infection.

The move follows an in-house committee’s recommendation to test all patients after a 30-year-old operation theatre assistant tested positive on April 24, following which nine other healthcare workers were infected and more than 150 other such workers were quarantined.

The committee said all patients admitted to medicine emergency will be tested according to government guidelines. This includes patients being admitted to departments of psychiatry, obstetrics and gynaecology for childbirth and surgery and others requiring angioplasty or endoscopy.

“The hospital administration has accepted the recommendations to save healthcare workers from infections. This also includes patients who are brought by the police and their background is not known,” said Dr BS Chavan, directorcum-principal, GMCH-32.

With the implementation of the new hospital guidelines, sampling is also expected to increase significantly, for which the panel has stressed on the requirement of automatic extraction machines. The manual sample extraction process followed currently is cumbersome and automatic machines can remain in use even after routine medical services resume, it said.

The brief standard operating procedure prepared by the panel states that the condition of the patients will be assessed in the emergency following which they can be tested. Another panel will now be coordinating the testing process.