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Nazlin.......
The Covid
times
L ike in any place, or hospital there
will be a consultant physician and
the errand physician.
That means that the second one,
that's me, will be for errands. And
my story dates back 8 years before when I
was there in General hospital, Pathanamthit-
ta as NCD physician, then infectious disease
physician, and so the H1N1 physician/nodal
officer. So I was good at taking throat swabs.
So on January 2020,in Kerala,we got three
isolated cases of corona virus infection, which
got later baptized as Covid 19, from China
which was successfully isolated and treated.
So the department became proactive and
they wanted lots of cases to be picked up,
so everyone, mostly from China and Italy
was supposed to be tested. And by default I
became the covid physician. My job is to do
the hospital work, in OP, wards and you have
some cases of suspected covid, inside the
payward rooms kept in isolation and I have
to go there put PPE, and poke their nose and
throat. Which was nothing new for me, I have
2K1 MBBS, Trivandrum Medical College
been doing the same thing for last 5 years or
6 years. The only new thing was the PPE! A
very sophisticated gown, Not so easy to wear
and hot. Only problem was I need at least
one assistant to manage the swab with sterile
but very difficult to remove. Uncomfortable
precautions. So someone was needed nearby,
while removing my PPE, with the scissors so
that while getting stuck they help me to tear
open the PPE, which was not the protocol.
Again ignorance is bliss. The usual helper will
be Mr Suresh, the JHI, A man willing to do
all the jobs from administration to a janitor's.
Then number of suspects increased, so the
hospital work and covid work was not going
smoothly. And thus Dr Sharath was posted
for helping me. And it was really a welcome
change for me.
So the suspected patients, whose swab was
taken, was kept in the room and will be there
for next two or three days without going out,
isolated and in 2 days the PCR report will
arrive and obviously they will be negative
and will be send home. In that 3 days they
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2K1 MBBS, Trivandrum Medical College