During mid of
June, we had received a call from the county health office informing us about a
quarantine case would be sent over to us for treatment..
A senior lady who
was undergoing home quarantine after returning from Peru had developed diarrhea
and fever. I was doing day shift with my colleague G at that time. The
ambulance came hours later with the ambulance team in full gear. Two patients
came instead of one, the lady had brought her 10 years old asymptomatic
grandson who was undergoing home quarantine with her as no one is looking after
him.
G took the case
and taken proper precaution while doing the consultation. A PCR swab test was
done and xray was taken. The xray had revealed bilateral lung infiltration and
we agreed that she was probably a covid victim judging from her xray and
history. A swab test was also taken for the child even though he was
asymptomatic. After 2hours of waiting, both the test result came back positive
and a second confirmation test was done. We had informed the local health
authority and as we had only one negative isolation ward and we had to referred
both the case to another hospital.
The process was a
smooth despite of the late transferring process. The case was placed all the
time in our isolation room outside the hospital premises. The patients were
transferred out after 6 hours of retention in the isolation room.
The lady with her daughter
in law and grandson had migrated to Peru a year before. Due to uprising of
Covid cases in Peru and lack of vaccine; she and her grandson had returned for
vaccination. They had travelled from Peru to Panama and later transit via
Turkey, Hongkong and arrived in Taiwan. A long journey and they had caught the
disease during transit.
The first rubble
hit us 1 week later after our first Covid case.
About 10 days
later , while I was on leave, the ED line chat group had announced our ED will
be closing for 8 hours for sanitization as a positive case Covid case had
entered our ED early in the morning.
A middle-aged male
had presented to our ED at 5am for fever. He claimed that he was a delivery man
and no significant travel nor contact history was noted. As no active case was
noted around our county, the attending emergency physician had allowed him to
enter our ER and he was put on a drip and antipyretics. A Covid PCR swab test
was later done and patient was discharged without waiting the result.
By 7am, a positive
result came back and our ED was shut down for sanitization. The patient was
admitted to another hospital for care. Our colleague had apparently broken the
rule and allow febrile patient to enter our ED. A swab was done without any
proper precaution measure. The event had led to quarantine of 1 physician, 1
radiographer, 2 nurses, 1 attendant and 1 counter clerk.
Contact tracing
was done and it had revealed that he did not give the whole story. He claimed
that he was a delivery man but he only delivered human; he was actually a “taxi
sapu” driver (illegal taxi operator). The contact tracing had led to a dozen of
patient being isolated and checked. One of them was an elderly male who was
seen by me few days ago. The elderly male had presented to our ED for hypoglycemia and
was discharged 3 hours later after his sugar stabilized. I had asked if he
wanted any admission but he denied even though he was still feeling giddiness
on his discharge.
The elderly male
(Hypoman) was tested positive few days later. Now we had 4 cases, the granny
(Peru grandma), the grandson (Peru grandson) and the taxi driver(Taximan)
So the connection
between them was still unclear at that point…The common part was all of them
lived around the same area……
