Progressive Medicos and Scientists Forum has slammed the decision of Union Health Ministry to deny medical personnel, resident doctors, junior consultants, nurses, technicians and janitors any quarantine quarters for the duration of their COVID deployment, pointing out that it has led to the numbers of available COVID warriors to plummet in unprecedented numbers.“Healthcare workers are coming to their duty stations from home and returning back to their families when their shift ends. They not only risk bringing infection to their families from patients they treat but also infecting their patients who might not have any infection before coming to the hospital. Even hospitals which didn’t have requisite manpower before the third wave have been asked to run non-COVID and COVID services simultaneously,” it said in a press release signed by its general secretary Dr Siddhartth Taara.“To make things worse, post-COVID infection isolation period has been reduced from 17 days to 10 to 7 and now to just 5 days. Symptoms might improve after 5 days but significant amount of virii can continue to shed well beyond 5 days as many studies show. Post-duty quarantine has also been cancelled,” it added.“Numbers of healthcare workers are now low beyond critical because they were asked to fight this war without barracks and bunkers i.e. quarantine quarters. Delay in NEET-PG 2021 counseling and exodus of contractual doctors from public sector due to poor working conditions has left us with a much smaller standing army of COVID warriors than we had in 2020. And this policy has left even them vulnerable,” it said.“This crisis of acute medical personnel shortages across the country to take care of the patient load are a direct result of this policy. It’s a security failure and how it puts non-COVID patients in our hospitals and our families in homes at risk is an ethical disaster,” PMSF said.“Crony hospital-hotel quarantine strategy was abandoned by the vindictive Central and state governments as soon as the resident doctors gathered courage to protest the undue delay in the counselling process and exposed the critically-low manpower our hospitals are running on. If medical colleges and teaching hospitals had proper hostels with attached toilet and bathrooms where isolation at individual level was possible, quarantine in hotels would have never been needed in the first place,” it added.“Construction and procurement of quarantine and isolation quarters within the campuses or nearby should have started from 2020 keeping economic sustainability in mind,” it said.PMSF put out of a charter out demands, which include:1. Increasing isolation period for citizens employed in non-essential services to 10 days.2. Increasing isolation period for HCWs who work in designated Red COVID zones to 7 days from 5 days.3. Making negative RAT tests on two consecutive days mandatory for workforce on whom work from home does not apply, before they join their duty stations physically.4. Provision to opt for isolation quarters with running hot water and functional toilets for healthcare workers for the duration of COVID deployment and 5 days afterwards, utilizing govt-run houses and hotels if needed.5. Building and maintaining permanent residential/hostel facilities with attached toilet bathrooms and other basic necessities for medical personnel within campus or not far from hospitals.
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