On March 4, the Pune Municipal Corporation-run Dr Naidu hospital was asked to reserve 100 beds and two floors as an isolation facility for Covid-19 patients. At present, there are 15 Covid-19 patients at the hospital, which sees an average footfall of 1,500 visitors every day. “People come here with a lot of anxiety and fear of death,” says Dr Sudhir Patsute who, along with his team, has been working round-the-clock for the past fortnight. “Even if a lot of patients come to us eager to be tested, we have to turn them away because we will not test them unless the law asks us to do so.”
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Patsute is not new to battling epidemics; the hospital handled swine flu cases in 2009. “The coordination among all the agencies is 20 times better now than it was a decade ago,” he says. Patsute heads a 150-member team that includes doctors, nurses, sanitation workers and administrative officials. Fifty per cent of the hospital’s current workforce has been outsourced to handle the pandemic.
Patsute says that the country is still in the early stages of transmission. “There is no reason to believe that India will not be a repeat of China,” he says. “We are preparing ourselves for the worst to come.”