![Nurses and doctors scampered into nearby wards and rooms after the clinical officer said he was “sure” he had contracted COVID-19. [PHOTO | FILE]](https://i0.wp.com/www.k24tv.co.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Kakamega-Hospital.jpg?resize=730%2C414&ssl=1)
A senior clinical officer at the Kakamega County Teaching and Referral Hospital on Tuesday, April 21, caused drama at the maternity ward after he began coughing and sweating profusely while claiming he was “certain” he had contracted the dreaded coronavirus.
Claims by the medic, who is in charge of the hospital’s coronavirus isolation centre, immediately threw admitted women -- who had given birth via emergency C-section -- into panic mode.
Nurses and doctors scampered into nearby wards and rooms after the clinical officer said he was “sure” he had contracted COVID-19 while attending to patients admitted at the hospital’s quarantine facility, which is 200 meters from the maternity wing. The incident happened at 11am.
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The clinical officer was one of the medics chosen by Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya to head the COVID-19 isolation unit at the county’s largest referral hospital.
After claiming he was “certain” that he had caught the bug, the health officer is said to have run into one of the recovery rooms in the maternity ward and closed the door from the inside.
Attempts by some of his “brave” colleagues to ask him to take himself to the quarantine facility bore no fruit as he refused to open the door.
K24 Digital understands that the clinical officer only opened the door after he was threatened by his colleagues that journalists will be called to expose him.
Upon opening the door, he ran straight to the isolation facility -- 200 meters away -- and was quarantined in one of the rooms.
“Why would they assign a doctor (sic) who attends to COVID-19 carriers to undertake surgical operation procedures on us?” posed one of the new mothers.
“We are urging the administration of Kakamega Hospital to assign specific doctors to expectant women, and the doctors given to us should not be attending to coronavirus patients. If they are shuttling between us and the COVID-19 patients, then they would be risking our lives,” said another patient at the maternity ward.
Kakamega County Health minister, Rachel Jahula Okumu, told K24 Digital that the first round of COVID-19 tests conducted on the said-doctor returned negative results.
“He remains under close medical observation,” said Okumu.
