Delhi: Out in the open in a Covid-19 isolation camp

NEW DELHI: Dr

Fathima Febin Salu

panicked when one of her colleagues posted with her at the

Narela

quarantine centre was infected by the novel coronavirus last month. The 33-year-old immediately asked to be tested with other team members working in the

isolation

blocks where more than 160 of the 317 patients had tested positive for Covid-19.

“When the results came three days later, I was relieved to find I was negative,” Salu said. “So I reported for duty, but on another assignment at the Delhi government dispensary at

Gulabi Bagh

’s Gurmandi. I am surveillance-in-charge responsible for contact tracing in the area. Alongside, I also have normal OPD duty.”

When the Kerala native, daughter of doctor parents in

Kozhikode

, and her husband, Dr Amod Kumar, were on shift duty, her sister-in-law took care of their two-and-a-half-year-old son. “It is tough, balancing work and personal life at a time when test results are coming back positive,” admits Salu.

When the coronavirus outbreak began, Salu, a medical officer posted in North Delhi district since 2014, was initially tasked with medical management of passengers arriving from abroad. “I was posted at the Narela quarantine centre on March 19 and 20, and then again from March 28 to April 10 as the block nodal officer,” she says. “After the arrival of inmates from the mosque at Nizamuddin, I was assigned blocks 34 and 35 at the centre and these had nearly 320 inmates. I had coordinated medical checkups and sampling of these inmates and out of this batch, nearly 50% report came as positive,” she says.

At present, her duty hours run from 8am to 2pm. “But I maintain phone surveillance through the day. If I get a call about a positive case in the Gurmandi area, I promptly instruct an ASHA worker to go and put up a quarantine poster in front of the infected person’s house,” the doctor says. Every positive case makes it necessary to keep under surveillance up to a hundred houses around the affected spot.

“With the number of people being tested rising by the day, the number of positive results is also increasing,” Salu notes. “Many people are getting themselves tested on their own. We are monitoring those who are home-quarantined.”

Sometimes, the local residents’ welfare association calls to say that members of a Covid-positive person’s family were violating isolation norms, and she responds to incidents like that.

Delhi’s testing capacity is limited, but everyone related to an infected person is screened and tested. This takes a lot of precautions to protect the health professionals from themselves being infected. “Mask and gloves are vitally essential along with thermal scanners,” points out Salu. “At the quarantine centre, we also used personal protection equipment. In the field, these are not required because the exposure to the coronavirus is less.”

Fortunately for people like Salu, those deployed at the quarantine centres are now provided accommodation in the vicinity to help them avoid going home and risking their family members.