From Sandeep Sharma
GUWAHATI: Altogether 12 Covid-19 patients succumbed to their infection at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) here on Monday midnight as there was no senior doctor in the hospital during night hours to attend Covid patients.
Of the deceased, nine patients were critical and admitted in the ICU, where three patients were from normal wards.
Two patients died in the emergency ward.
In all of the cases, O2 saturation levels were below 90% while admission.
One patient who hailed from Sonitpur succumbed within 30-minutes of admission at GMCH.
The incident has forced Health minister Keshab Mahanta to pass a directive to all medical college hospitals to make arrangements for associate professor or senior ranking doctor to attend Covid patients during night hours.
In a video conferencing, the minister also directed the medical college authorities to make similar arrangements during day shift.
Following the death of the 12 patients, Mahanta made a sudden visit to the hospital at 1:30 am to take stock of the situation.
Mahanta made sure to check each and every floor of GMCH in a thorough manner.
To his knowledge, no senior doctors were present even after the direction issued by chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma in the early part of this month.
Mahanta was deeply saddened by the irresponsibility of the senior doctors in the hospital.
The minister went ahead to discuss and investigate the matter and worked on how to rectify the mistakes made.
The meeting was attended by principal health secretary Anurag Goel, health secretary Siddhartha Singh, NHM mission director Dr Lakshmanan S, director of medical education Dr Anup Barman and NHM executive director Dr Manoj Choudhury.
Meanwhile, GMCH authorities said that the patients arrived at the hospital after their oxygen levels fell way below the required level.
“None of these 12 patients, who were above the age of 45 had been vaccinated,” claimed GMCH superintendent Dr Abhijit Sarma.
“Nine patients were in the ICU and three were in the ward. The ones in the ward had arrived within 24 hrs at GMCH. The saturation at the time of their arrival at GMCH was below 90 percent. They had come from different parts of Guwahati and nearby areas,” Dr Sarma told the media here.
“I appeal to the people to get vaccinated as vaccination is very important. Especially middle-aged people among whom the virus is prevalent. Please, take the vaccine. Also, people still have this apprehension of not approaching a hospital in times like this. Even after they have symptoms like fever, body ache, or colds, people don’t go for Covid-19 testing. The government has already announced that there will be no home isolation,” he added.
The state has recorded 2,672 Covid-19 positive cases on Tuesday pushing the total number of positive cases to 5,06,005 in the state, an official bulletin of National Health Mission (NHM) said.
The positivity rate is 2.64 per cent (2,672 cases out of 1,01,222 tests done = 2.64%).
27 patients succumbed to their infection, taking the death toll in the pandemic to 4,509 on Tuesday.
Of the fresh cases, 149 have been reported from Kamrup (Metro) district.
