JOIN USCoronavirus: Inside the fearless fight to keep COVID-19 at bay
The days before the onset of Covid-19 in the state were like a rumour of war, throwing doctors and healthcare workers across the state into a state of apprehension.
By all initial reports, the disease had cut a swathe through healthcare workers across the world, especially in Italy, often with fatal results.
In India, the disclosure of the country’s first case, on January 30 in neighbouring Kerala, sent alarm bells ringing, officials said. This reached a fevered pitch on March 8, when an IT worker who had travelled from the United States, was registered as the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in Karnataka.
“There is no doubt that medical staff were made apprehensive by the news considering the effect the virus was having on other parts of the world,” a senior medical official told DH. Quarantine centres were lacklustre, lacked vital safety equipment and in many cases, did not possess adequate numbers of staff.
But at Victoria Hospital, which has long served as the primary emergency care centre for the city, the growing crisis was in many ways, old hat.
“Our staff was experienced in dealing with contagious diseases, H1N1, cholera, tuberculosis, so when Covid-19 came along, we already had our safety protocols honed to a fine pitch,” said Dr Aseema Banu, Nodal Officer of the hospital’s Trauma Care Centre.
Staff at the hospital had soon launched into a regimen of meditation and tranquillity exercises to maintain, what Dr Banu described, as their sanity.
“If the Italian experience showed us anything it was that healthcare workers need to keep an aura of calm about them. Studies have shown that stress can reduce immunity. We needed to keep our immunity at high levels while dealing with Covid-19,” she added.
But the Virus Research Diagnostic Laboratory, Victoria Hospital, being the first testing centre for Covid-19 in the city (activating itself on February 1), initially had no role to play in addressing the growing outbreak. Across the city in Jayanagar, the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Chest Diseases (RGICD) took receipt of the first case, owing to the fact that the hospital had a National Institute of Virology testing unit attached to it.
Already, on February 2, RGICD had moved to set up a quarantine centre with 15 beds with a roll of hastily drawn up on-duty staff, many of whom were currently involved in treating tuberculosis patients, although some senior doctors had cut their teeth treating other coronaviruses in the past, such as SARS and MERS.
“Most of us felt we could handle the looming crisis because we were experienced in treating SARS in 2002-03. Though Covid-19 has no known cure, the mortality rate is 3%,” explained Dr C Nagaraja, the director of RGICD.
“This is why our designated staff: 22 to 25 doctors, 60 nurses, two technicians and six counsellors, operating along three shifts to ensure 24-by-7 care — felt we could handle the crisis,” he added.