Safety gear, medical waste float in Chhattisgarh’s flooded COVID-19 ward

Mangalore Today News Network

Bhopal, Oct 10, 2020: A few hours of heavy rain on Friday flooded a government hospital’s COVID-19 isolation ward in Chhattisgarh, where coronavirus cases have been on rise since September. The rain also disrupted the hospital’s power supply forcing the staff to shift nine patients - six of them suspected to have Covid and three in need of oxygen - to another floor.

 

Visuals of the isolation ward in Ambikapur city - 333 km north of Chhattisgarh’s capital Raipur - show safety kits and medical waste floating in a foot of murky water. The ward in-charge can be heard apprising a senior official about the flooding and power cut, and requesting generator back-up so patients can be given oxygen.

Images and clips of the state of this coronavirus care centre - where samples are also collected for testing - have been shared widely on the internet.

According to officials, the 10-bed COVID-19 isolation ward is on lower ground than the rest of the hospital and is prone to flooding. The wing was earlier used to treat tuberculosis patients and was converted into a coronavirus care centre amid the pandemic.

The decision is now creating a potentially dangerous situation for patients and the medical staff as coronavirus patients may also contract other diseases.

Chhattisgarh recorded almost 3,000 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking its tally past 1.37-lakh mark. There has been no let-up in the rise of coronavirus cases in Chhattisgarh despite local lockdowns being imposed in many districts. It is also among the 10 states which accounted for almost 82 per cent of all Covid fatalities in India in the last 24 hours, Health Ministry data shows.

courtesy:NDTV