How did things come to this pass? The government is responsible in a big way for creating such intense fear of the virus that people have lost their humanity and are abandoning their relatives and friends, and many hospitals and doctors are also unable to do their duty. 1/n
1. There was no need to shut down hospitals for weeks and quarantine the entire staff if a patient tested positive when simple sanitisation would have sufficed. As a result, hospitals stopped taking suspected cases. Many non COVID patients died without treatment due to this. 2/n
2. There was no need to seal off entire streets and buildings if a patient tested positive, when just isolating the person in his or her home would have sufficed. As a result, the fear factor jumped manifold of having any patient nearby, and the disease was stigmatised. 3/n
3. There was no need to prohibit private hospitals from taking in these patients. Guidelines should have been issued on handling COVID patients so that staff got accustomed to them as the numbers built up. It would have avoided the severe crisis of staff we are now facing. 4/n
4. No crackdown on slum areas of Mumbai for blatant violations of lockdown. If only half a city is under lockdown, the effort was doomed to failure. Different strategy was needed for slums where 10-12 people in a small room makes it impossible to stay indoors, didn’t happen. 5/n
No effort made till date to reassure families of medical and paramedical personnel that they would be taken care of and should allow their loved ones to continue working. As a result, the staff shortage has now reached such a level that nursing homes are shutting down. 6/n
Penalising private hospitals taking in COVID patients despite all odds and having to pay 2-2.5 times the salary for retaining staff, by fixing ridiculously low charges making it unviable. Due to the fear, non COVID treatment volumes are down by 80-90%. This is a major issue. 7/n
Situation of most private hospitals is now desperate. If they take in COVID patients they won’t earn anything but at least have some cash flow to survive. If they don’t, there isn’t enough non COVID work to sustain them and they run even more into debt. Many will close down. 8/n
This could have been prevented by allowing all hospitals to treat COVID patients just like other patients with pre condition of isolation. The fear in medical personnel as well as patients and added massive increase in costs due to this could have been completely avoided. 9/9
Well. Some idiocies never change.
