Chandigarh: PGI revises rules for testing medical staff

Worries about more healthcare workers contracting the deadly virus  have spurred PGI to revise its old guidelines for testing contacts on a day when a professor of pathology and a senior resident from the department tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday.

As things are changing and numbers picking up, the previous guidelines were unable to trace the origin and resulted in the spread of the virus to 39 healthcare workers in the institute, according to doctors. As many as 25 healthcare workers are quarantined following the recent cases that came to light in two days at PGI.

The ICMR had suggested to test only close contacts of a positive case in a hospital — a protocol laid out at the start of the pandemic in March. “A discussion was held regarding the need to develop SOPs for management of positive cases as being reported from non-Covid areas/wards,” said a PGI spokesperson.

The cases in the ICU  rattled the authorities to revise the testing guidelines. The new guidelines propose testing for all contacts present in the cubicle where the patient or healthcare worker  developed symptoms.

Sources said the outdated guidelines of contact tracing and testing was followed until there was an outbreak in one of the ICUs. Moreover, the committee in the PGI for the testing missed out on one of the nurses who was the origin of the outbreak. “A patient developed symptoms and was tested for the virus. As all patients are admitted only when they test negative, the patient was not the source. So, we decided to test all the health workers in our department. And traced a nurse who had travelled to Punjab without informing her superiors and getting quarantined,” said a faculty member. He said, “Another patient in the ICU also contracted the virus.” –TOI