Hyderabad: Poor quality PPE kits blamed

Hyderabad: With Telangana topping the list of States where healthcare workers reported the highest COVID positivity rate, the Congress demanded a probe into the supply of poor-quality PEE kits to medical staff.

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee on Saturday slammed the State Government for not taking adequate safety precautions while supplying the PPE kits to healthcare workers who are the frontline Corona warriors. "Over 2,000 healthcare workers, including doctors, were infected with Covid-19 and at least 14 of them died due to the disease. Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao is directly responsible for these infections and deaths as he did not take measures to protect these frontline warriors against Coronavirus," TPCC Treasurer Gudur Narayana Reddy said in a media statement on Saturday.

Narayana Reddy pointed out that the statistics released by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare two days ago has revealed Telangana was on the top in Covid-19 positivity rate with about 18 per cent of total healthcare workers getting infected with the disease. The positive rate is 16 per cent in Maharashtra and 14 per cent in Delhi while both the States have a huge number of cases compared to Telangana. "CM KCR and Health Minister Eatala Rajender need to explain as to why the infection rate was high among healthcare workers in Telangana. The feedback which we got from the doctors suggests that the authorities did not follow the hospital infection control practices," he said.

Narayana Reddy said that the PPE kits supplied to the healthcare workers were of poor quality. Doctors claimed that PPE kits were almost see-through and lower than 70 gsm, which are much below the prescribed 90 gsm. Similarly, he said that the masks supplied to the healthcare workers in Telangana were also of sub-standard quality and did not meet the N95 masks of Venus and 3M.