Railway Hospital, Vijayawada sets up No Exposure Throat Swab Collection Window for suspicious patients

As a part of Covid-19 preparedness measures and to tackle the spread of virus, Railway Hospital, Vijayawada has come up with a unique way of collecting the throat swab samples from the suspicious patients. A swab collection window is developed converting one of the windows of the of ENT clinic of Railway Hospital, Vijayawada using glass pane fixing two gloves. The main objective is to prevent the spread of droplet or aerosol infection to doctor from the COVID suspected patients and ensure safer environment for Doctors while collecting the throat swab samples

The testing method involves collection of samples from inside the Clinic. The suspected coronavirus-infected individual, whose samples are being taken, has to walk up to the booth and stand in exterior front of the glass pane. The doctor inserts hands through the pane fixed gloves, the patient is directed to open mouth, and swab is collected without any physical contact.  The swab collected from the patients are kept in Viral transport Medium and preserved in cold chain for dispatching it to testing centers of State Govt. After the collection of throat swab sample the gloves and window would be disinfected with Sodium Hypo Chlorite before proceeding to take the next sample. The collection process is fully non-exposing to Doctor and gets over in two minutes. This significantly reduce manpower requirement and prevents the aerosol/ droplet infection in case of any coughing.

Speaking on the occasion, Shri Naseer Hussain, Asst. Chief Medical Superintendent, Railway Hospital, Vijayawada said that it is the safest, cost effective way in the similar lines of phone booth testing method recently developed in State of Kerala to collect the swab samples without any physical contact from the suspicious patients. He said that a separate flow chart was designed and circulated among all the colleagues as per WHO guidelines to treat the suspicious patients with fever to avoid the spread. He also said that employees with health issues, fever and recent history of foreign visits are being regularly monitored by gathering of reports from all the Departments on daily basis.  “Isolation wards & quarantine facilities are being strictly monitored and frequent disinfection is being carried out to curtail the spread”, he added

Shri P. Srinivas, Divisional Railway Manager, Vijayawada complimented Shri. V. V. Satyanarayana, CMS, Vijayawada, Dr. Ravikanth, ENT Specialist & Team for coming up with an innovative way to collect the samples from the patients and assured full cooperation and support in dealing with Covid-19 crisis.