..as 15 council staffers test positive for Covid-19
Zvikomborero Parafini, H-Metro Reporter
City of Harare Health Services Director Dr Prosper Chonzi on Monday urged health workers to be vigilant and shun complacency in the fight against Covid-19.
Chonzi said this on Facebook while speaking on the 15 city health front line workers who have been infected and the measures being taken.
“I can confirm and raise my concerns on the City of Harare health workers who have tested PCR positive for Covid-19, there are five who have tested positive at Wilkins Hospital, and ten at Beatrice Road Infectious Diseases Hospital, and these are across all categories, your nurses, domestic attendants, generals hands and some of the drivers who have been ferrying nurses to and from home.
“Let me also add that they are all stable, they are all asymptomatic and have not needed to be admitted for medical attention, we have since isolated them and most of them are isolating at home, we have followed up their contacts and those they work with so we have actually identified a place, where those that were in close contact with them and are health care workers are housed to ensure that we protect them and their families from getting infected,” he said
He added that the council is trying to provide adequate PPE for its employees and they were attending to cases dressed adequately.
“We have been trying and continue to ensure that all health workers have adequate PPEs, and they have been attending to cases dressed adequately, but there are many reasons why health care workers can get infected, ranging from inadequate PPEs to general complacency as they get used to the condition.
“We have reemphasised on training that nurses and all health workers should undergo before they begin attending to Covid-19 cases, at the moment there are no patients at Beatrice Road (Infectious Diseases Hospital) because it’s still under renovations, so we aren’t sure where the index case could have gotten the infection from, but our worry now is the local transmission within the gated community, at Wilkins, these patients were working at the Opportunistic Infections Clinic, not the Isolation Clinic, so they might have had exposure from a patient that hadn’t been diagnosed yet so we are doing our best in contact tracing.
“They are all receiving attention and we hope that they we all get out of this much stronger and will still be willing to work in the frontline,” he said.
Chonzi added that they still urge people to wear masks when in public, practice social distancing, personal and environmental hygiene.
“We also urge health care workers not to be complacent, not to be sloppy as local transmissions continue to increase, if anything we want them to be more vigilant as they attend to cases, we insist on prevention as resources aren’t in abundance,” he said.
– HMETRO
