Sheth LG Municipal General Hospital has emerged as a Red Zone Area with more than 20 doctors testing positive for COVID-19 and the response of the authorities is simply apalling. @AmdavadAMC @vnehra @CollectorAhd @ahmedabadmirror @TOIAhmedabad @PMOIndia

#coronavirusinindia

Many other resident doctors and staff are likely to be positive but are not being tested by the authorities (not sure if this is a deliberate attempt). These same resident doctors are being sent out to the catchment areas to collect samples for red-zone testing.

The same doctors are being put for duty in the hospital. All this is being done without proper provision of PPEs. The residents doctors have been left to scramble for whatever PPEs they can arrange on their own while being instructed to "reuse" the officially provided single PPE.

This has caused a cycle of doctors being infected from patients and further infecting more patients who didn't have COVID-19 in the first place. The effect created by asymptomatic patients in the cycle seems to have even ignored by everyone involved.

High risk areas -Jamalpur, Danilimda, Behrampura, Dariyapur, Khadia are in the vicinity and have a high density of asymptomatic patients. The suspects outright refuse to get tested but the resident doctors go beyond their call of duty to make sure the suspects are tested.

A number of patients coming to the hospital for other treatments also come from the same areas and are asymptomatic but turn out to be positive for coronavirus. The resident doctors treating these patients still don't have PPEs.

But when the doctors demand test on the same grounds of being carriers without symptoms (it's more likely they already know they are positive), they are denied the test until they show symptoms. Seems hypocritical on the part of the authorities and hospital administration.

On official visit by authorities to the hospital, a handful of doctors are scrambled and provided with whatever PPEs are at hand just to stand in the front and make everything look hay and merry. Another classic example of blinded bureaucracy.

What is needed is simply a swab test of the doctors demanding one. If there are no doctors, how can we expect them to treat patients. And a sufficient supply of PPEs has always been the apparent requirement which the authorities don't seem to care about fulfilling.

The authorities need to look into this immediately and take action. The coronavirus situation is worsening day by day at the hospital. @SureshPatelMLA @drkiritpsolanki

@FordaIndia and @AIIMSRDA it is very important that the issue is taken up with the authorities on an urgent basis for the welfare of doctors and medicos in Ahmedabad