Mayo Hospital mortalities: 178 suspected virus victims’ bereaved families await reports

LAHORE: Out of 386 Covid-19 mortalities at Mayo Hospital till date, mystery shrouds death of 178 patients, supposedly dying of coronavirus, as their test reports are still awaited.

According to details, a total of 386 patients, supposedly of Covid-19, have died at Mayo Hospital till date. However, according to daily reports, issued by Mayo Hospital, reports of only 155 patients have been issued so far, declaring them as Covid-19 positive, while the reports of 178 patients have still not been delivered to the bereaved families.

“Nobody knows the cause of death of 178 patients,” said a doctor at Mayo Hospital on the condition of anonymity. He said various other patients, currently under treatment at the hospital, are also waiting for their reports, despite passage of many days.

Some doctors claimed that the government had not established/upgraded its laboratory at Mayo Hospital, and the administration was sending patients’ samples to laboratories at Lahore General Hospital (LGH), Institute of Public Health (IPH) and Pakistan Kidney and Liver Institute (PKLI) for Covid-19 tests.

They said Mayo Hospital, housing a Central Coronavirus Control Room for Lahore, had been accommodating most of Covid-19 patients, but regrettably, it didn’t have its own lab. Therefore, it had been dependent on other hospitals for coronavirus investigations.

“Mayo has a PCR machine, donated by an organisation, which leaves no hurdle in establishing a lab with minimal cost,” a doctor told The News. Presently, he said, Mayo Hospital is even dependent on a lab at IPH, a non-health providing facility.

Due to absence of a functional lab at Mayo Hospital, said the sources, many samples could not be sent to other labs even after passage of many days, though the blood samples become ‘invalid’ after a certain period of time. They said PKLI, LGH, IPH and Jinnah Hospital labs have their own issues, which further delay the Mayo Hospital patients’ reports.

Doctors at Mayo Hospital claimed that the hospital lacked an updated system, which caused unnecessary delay in delivery of reports to patients. That was why, even the families of expired patients were awaiting reports of their deceased loved-ones.

Mayo Hospital Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and In-charge Corona Centre Prof Dr Asad Aslam Khan, while confirming the delay in diagnostic reports of 178 expired patients, claimed that Mayo Hospital did not have the required PCR machine, which conducted coronavirus tests. Therefore, he said, they had to send samples for testing to LGH, JHL or other labs, which caused delay in delivery of reports within stipulated period of time.

However, he said that the reports of suspected patients, who had died supposedly due to coronavirus, were usually received positive even after delayed delivery. “There’s hardly any negative reports of the patients, who expired as suspected Covid-19 cases, after their deaths,” he added. He also denied reports of shortage of kits in Mayo Hospital.