EIGHTEEN health personnel working in the same ward at the
United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH) have tested positive for Covid-19 after
allegedly attending to an infected patient.
The hospital staff members were placed on self-isolation at
home after a male adult admitted to the hospital tested positive for Covid-19.
The exact number of health workers who came into contact with him was not
immediately availed but results of 18 of them came positive after tests.
Recently, 68 health workers at the hospital were forced to
self-isolate at home after a 79-year old woman who tested positive died at the
referral facility, but their status could not be established immediately.
Last month, 14 nurses at Mpilo Central Hospital who were
part of 197 isolating at home tested positive for Covid-19 after coming into
contact with patients who were coronavirus positive.
Acting UBH chief executive officer Dr Narcissus Dzvanga
yesterday said the hospital has activated its infection control prevention unit
after the latest Covid-19 confirmed cases.
“At the moment the figure that has been sent to me is that
18 have tested positive for Covid-19. We are still categorising them although
some are student nurses, general practitioners and nurse aids,” said Dr
Dzvanga.
He said the health workers tested positive while they were
self-isolating at home.
Dr Dzvanga said they contracted the virus after coming into
contact with a patient who had come to the hospital for treatment after he was
paralysed after being injured.
“We have a screening process that is done at the entrance
of the hospital. So, if you got any features or temperatures are within
Covid-19 classification, you don’t even go beyond the screening point. But this
case had different circumstances altogether. The index case is a young man who
got injured while trying to carry a 50kg bag of maize and got paralysed. There
was no direct finding of Covid-19 at presentation. But when we started to test
the patient routinely that is when it was picked. The staff that you are
talking about are from the same ward where he was admitted. It’s not like he
was moving up and down the hospital,” said Dr Dzvanga.
Acting UBH chief executive officer Dr Narcissus Dzvanga
However, officials at the hospital suspect that the patient
could have also contracted the virus while at the medical institution.
A source said there was a likelihood that a health worker
unknowingly infected the patient with the virus.
“This patient has been at the hospital for almost two
months and I doubt if he could not have been identified had he carried the
virus all that long.
“This could be a case of an asymptomatic health worker who
didn’t know that they had the virus attending to him and infecting him with
Covid-19,” said the source.
In line with Covid-19 prevention measures to minimise the
risk of local transmissions, Cabinet recently resolved that all positive
patients be placed in an isolation facility as some people were not adhering to
procedures while at home.
On Tuesday, the country recorded 53 new Covid-19 cases and
the 18 UBH cases are part of the 34 local transmissions recorded on that day.
The remaining 19 cases were of people coming from South Africa (16) and
Botswana (3).
This was the first time that the country recorded more
local transmissions than imported cases.
Most of the people who had been testing positive for
Covid-19 in Zimbabwe were those returning home from South Africa, Botswana,
Mozambique, the United Kingdom, the United States among other countries. Chronicle
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