Starting Tuesday, almost the whole of India will be under a near-complete lockdown to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. But Raja...
Starting Tuesday, almost the whole of India will be under a near-complete lockdown to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. But Rajasthan’s Bhilwara district had shut down and sealed its boundaries on March 20 itself when six medical practitioners – three doctors and three support staff – from a private hospital tested positive for the virus. The source of the infection is yet to be ascertained.
According to a report in BBC Hindi, there were more than 600 people admitted in the hospital at that time. In addition, more than 5,000 people had been treated at the hospital’s outpatient department in the two weeks leading to the discovery.
Bhilwada’s drastic decision to shut down, much before the rest of the country, was driven by the fear that all of these people could be possible carriers of the virus.
Hospitals becoming the node of coronavirus infections is not unheard of: in Italy, a Covid19 patient is alleged to have infected as many as eight people in a hospital, many of them health workers.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte later accused the hospital of not following procedures.
While it is not yet clear what exactly happened in the hospital in Bhilwara, the incident could be a timely warning for the rest of the country, particularly as the...
