More on Covid-19

Of over 3,300 Covid-19 cases among health workers in China, 22 had died by the end of February, noted an editorial in the Lancet warning that unlike ventilators or wards, healthcare workers “cannot be urgently manufactured or run at 100% occupancy for long periods”. It called on governments to ensure the safety of healthcare workers as “health care workers are every country’s most valuable resources” in the current crisis.In Italy, 20% of healthcare workers responding to the Covid-19 spread were infected, noted the editorial. This meant that almost 2,630 health workers were infected in Italy, of which 13 have died.Other than physical and mental exhaustion, problems in access to personal protective equipment (PPE) is what is adding to the risk of infection among medics. “Medical staff have been prioritized in many countries, but PPE shortages have been described in the most affected facilities. Alongside concerns for their personal safety, health care workers are anxious about passing the infection to their families,” noted the editorial.The New York Times too reported on doctors and nurses in the US struggling with shortage of PPEs. The Centre for Disease Control in the US had to recently change its guidelines on masks saying that regular surgical masks are “an acceptable alternative” when examining or treating coronavirus patients. The change had to be made following shortage of special N95 masks, which are able to filter out 95% of all airborne particles if used correctly. The US too has had doctors contracting coronavirus.In India, there have been a few cases of health workers getting infected including a junior doctor in King George Medical University , Lucknow and a senior doctor in Karnataka . An Indian doctor tweeted that they had divided the staff into two teams and sent one half home on quarantine leave so that they could take over after a fixed duration just in case the first half became incapacitated or affected with coronavirus.