Coronavirus: Bengaluru private hospitals limit visitors, ban medical reps

To ensure that the Covid-19 infection does not affect their patients, private hospitals in the city have restricted visitors and banned medical representatives from their premises.

While they recommend patients to teleconference with family members, they have also reduced the number of patient attendants. Hospital managements have advised patient attendants to ban visitors even during visiting hours in the wake of the coronavirus threat. They have also asked people to cancel non-essential or non-medical visits.

Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes Association president Dr R Ravindra said the hospitals have issued guidelines to ensure that there was not more than one visitor at a time.

For latest updates on coronavirus outbreak, click here

“Marketing representatives have been asked not to come since there’s no value addition by them at this time of crisis,” he said. “In fact, they visit multiple hospitals in a day and the bags could carry the virus. We don’t want the virus to be spread by them.”

Hospitals have also been screening patients and attendants to see if they are at risk of carrying the virus.

Dr Manish Mattoo, zonal director, Fortis Hospitals, said his hospital has reduced the number of attendants accompanying the patients from two to one. “We also screen them to see if they had travelled abroad or have any symptoms,” he added.

Medical college hospitals have asked students to stay away from certain areas for protection and also to ensure cost-effective functioning.

Dr Sanjiv Lewin, chief of medical services, St John’s Medical College Hospital, said his hospital has formed a task force that functions based on the directives of the central government and the World Health Organisation.

“The scare (of epidemic) has driven up the price of masks considerably,” Dr Lewin said. “Medical students are (therefore) stopped from entering certain areas to save on masks. Since we are a medical college hospital, we also have observers from other countries. We have asked them not to come.”