COVID-19 guidelines issued for hosps, nursing homes in Odisha

Bhubaneswar: Couple of days after a 60-year-old man undergoing treatment at a private hospital here tested positive for coronavirus, the Odisha Government has issued guidelines for general hospitals and nursing homes.

Here are the prime aspects of the guidelines:

* When a COVID-19 case is detected in the hospital, the facility should notify the Health Department immediately.

* The patient must be segregated to an isolated area, preferably a single cabin with attached toilet. If patient is critically ill in ICU, other patients in the room may be shifted to another section of the same building. These patients will be considered as contacts and will be followed for COVID-19 symptoms for fourteen days.

* Other patients in the hospital should be shifted to other section of the hospital and to be kept under observation. Aggressive disinfection protocol must be started in the same room and also the same floor. The patients in other cabins or wards must be shifted to other isolated areas of the hospital or to other hospitals.

* All healthcare and outsourcing personnel who had history of contact with the patients or deployed in the same block of the hospital must be identified, reported, quarantined and monitored for 14 days. For the staffers likely to be non-compliant or for whom home quarantine is not possible, the hospital authorities will be responsible for keeping them under quarantine and monitoring under their arrangement.

* All relatives and contacts must be sensitized on self monitoring, quarantine and standard precautionary measure, including hand-washing and social distancing.

* The hospital should practice aggressive visitor restriction and also should enforce sick leave policy in the facilities.

* No further admission to this section of hospital is allowed unless being a confirmed COVID -19 case and the hospital is prepared to convert the section into COVID-19 care unit.

* Unless the section is independent and isolated, the hospital should stop admitting any cases except during life threatening emergency who may be admitted on compassionate ground. This must be done only with prior information and explanation to the attendants of the patient.

* After discharge of the patient, the isolation room, all clinical areas and laboratory, where the patient had visited along with accessories, equipment, injection and dressing trolleys etc. must be disinfected as per the NCDC guidelines, before allowing other patient to be admitted. If the area of the hospital is not independent, the hospital must take up aggressive disinfection of the whole hospital before allowing other patients for admission.

* Government reserves the right to cancel the registration of the hospital, in case of any violation of the SOP or to initiate any legal action as deemed proper.