Bhubaneswar: Amid rising COVID-19 cases in the city here, the civic authority Monday instructed hospitals/nursing homes to make accommodation for employees who reside in slum areas for a period of 14 days.
With an increasing number of cases being reported from the slums of Bhubaneswar, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) issued fresh directives to private hospitals. In the order, it stated that all private hospitals/nursing homes will maintain an exclusive database of employees residing in slum areas of BMC. These employees are to be assigned a shift for 14 days and accommodation will be arranged by the hospitals itself.
“About 1/3rd of the city population resides in slum areas where social distancing is practically not possible. In the recent past, several healthcare workers/staff of private hospitals/nursing homes residing in the slums have tested positive for the virus. Frequent movement of hospital staff to slum areas, therefore, poses a risk of spread of the virus quickly which needs to be checked,” BMC Commissioner, Prem Chandra Chaudhary said.
Passing the order, the Commissioner also mentioned that post 14-days shift the set of employees will be relieved of the duties only after they test negative for COV1D-19. “The next set of employees will then be given duties and the same procedure will be adopted if they too belong to slum areas,” the directive said.
Furthermore, the notification instructed that all private hospitals/nursing homes will nominate a responsible officer of their organisation as nodal officer and share the name, designation and contact number along with the preliminary shift arrangement made by them with the ADUPHO-UH, along with the subsequent shifts.
It is worth mentioning that the capital city, having state’s largest slum dwellers, has seen a sharp increase in cases. As per the latest information, about 37 out of 314 cases till now have been detected from slums of Bhubaneswar. Even out of the 26 new COVID-19 patients detected in the last 24 hours, 23 are local contact cases and seven of them belong to three slums in the city.
