Coronavirus outbreak: At Ground Zero, 12 doctors, double the nurses at work

It was early January when Dr Chandrakant Pawar, superintendent of Kasturba Hospital the nodal facility for diagnosing and treating COVID-19 in Mumbai started preparing for the outbreak because China, he says, is “dangerously close”.

Written by Tabassum Barnagarwala | Mumbai | Updated: March 14, 2020 4:41:29 pm

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Medical staff wear masks amid concerns of COVID-19 spread at Kasturba Hospital in Mumbai on Friday. (Photo by Prashant Nadkar

“Anybody but doctors can work from home,” smiles Dr Jayanthi Shastri, head of BMC-run Kasturba Hospital’s laboratory, where each day over 60 samples are being tested. Within its walls, the quite laboratory has managed to shut out the panic the highly transmissible virus has caused in public, with everyone continuing to do their assigned tasks in an orderly way.