Featured image: A boy is tested by a nurse at a Mohalla clinic in New Delhi, March 21, 2020. Photo: PTI/Ravi Choudhary
New Delhi: As many as 800 people who had come in contact with a Mohalla clinic doctor in Maujpur who has tested positive for the coronavirus infection have been asked to quarantine themselves. Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain said the doctor in question, Gopal Jha, was discharged from an Intensive Care Unit on Wednesday and is now stable. Four people who came in contact with the doctor, including his wife and daughter, have also tested positive for COVID-19.
Jain said the doctor, posted in the clinic located in Mohanpuri area of Maujpur area of northeast Delhi, had came in contact with an infected woman, who had returned from Saudi Arabia on March 12. He contracted the disease from her. After his tests confirmed the virus, others who had come in contact with him were tested and four of them were found to be positive.
The government and health authorities have now decided to approach nearly all the 800 people who had visited the doctor in the clinic and urged them to self-quarantine themselves. Maujpur in North East Delhi is an area which houses a large number of small tenements and residences. The general low economic profile area had also witnessed riots last month and the threat of coronavirus has posed more problems for locals.
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Since it is a congested area, there are concerns that the disease could spread quickly. Realising this, of Shahdara’s sub-divisional magistrate has also asked those in self-quarantine to contact the control room in case they show any symptoms of the virus.
The civil administration has made additional efforts to reach out to people who visited the Mohalla Clinic between March 12 and March 18, asking them to stay in self-quarantine for a fortnight.
Meanwhile, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said that mohalla clinics will continue to function during the lockdown. “These health facilities will continue to function but with full precaution, as otherwise people will have to go long distances for treatment,” he said.
Henceforth, he said, all healthcare workers who are treating coronavirus patients will be tested regularly so that there is no spread of the virus.