Bihar health department reeled under Covid-19 shock on Sunday and the Indian Medical Association drew flak from various quarters after at least 19 doctors were found positive.

Many of them had participated in the two-day IMA 96th annual national conference (NATCON) organised on December 27 and 28 here in Patna. Chief minister Nitish Kumar was the chief guest at the event and had issued a warning about the onset of the third wave of the pandemic in the state.

Altogether 17 of the doctors found positive are from the Nalanda Medical College and Hospital (NMCH) in the state capital while two are from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Patna.

These 17 doctors are part of a group of 75 NMCH doctors who had attended the IMA annual national conference, and who were subjected to rapid antigen tests on Saturday.

The hospital administration has now sent their samples for RT-PCR tests.

Ironically, NMCH had just one Covid-19 patient and the sudden information about so many doctors turning positive created panic. All of them have mild symptoms, and have been isolated at the hospital campus.

Many senior doctors criticised the IMA decision to hold the conference, which was attended by around 5,000 doctors from across the country. Apart from Nitish, state health minister Mangal Pandey, several ministers and bureaucrats also participated in it.

“The event is a perfect example of throwing all caution to the wind. It was held at a time when the top doctors, officials and leaders in the country were expressing their concern about rising Covid-19 cases and fast spread of the omicron variant of the virus. It could have been deferred,” a senior Patna-based doctor told The Telegraph on the condition of anonymity.

Another doctor currently working with the health department said: “This is what happens when doctors do not practice what they preach. Though there could be no definite evidence how so many doctors caught the infection at one go, the IMA event should have been avoided. The situation is such that the chief minister and the health minister should also get themselves tested.”

On the other hand, the IMA rejected the blame and asserted that the outbreak of the infection among doctors in Patna has nothing to do with its conference.

“The outbreak of Covid-19 infection among the doctors of NMCH has no relation with our annual national conference. Infection can happen to anybody anywhere. There is no need to panic,” IMA national president doctor Sahajanand Prasad Singh told this newspaper.

Asked whether the event could have been postponed, Singh said that it was held with the government’s permission and all precautionary measures were taken.

“Nowhere in the world events have stopped due to omicron_. I am just now boarding a Delhi to Patna flight. Big events are being organised daily in Delhi. So many political rallies are being held everywhere. There is no need to either blame us or panic due to Covid. Some people are unnecessarily creating an issue over our national conference,” Singh added.

Meanwhile, Bihar witnessed 281 pandemic cases in the last 24 hours of which 136 were in Patna and 70 in Gaya.

The state government is gearing-up to conduct random Covid-19 tests at crowded places like markets and enforce stricter test regimen at railway stations and bus terminals.

At present there are 749 positive cases in Bihar. The state has witnessed over 7.27 lakh cases and 12,096 deaths, officially so far.

Genome sequencing of coronavirus began at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) Patna on Sunday. The state had to send the samples to the National Centre for Disease Control, New Delhi for such tests till now and it took around 10 days or more for the reports to come.