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ADELAIDE: A Malaysian-born doctor is being hailed as a “hero” in Australia for preventing a full-blown coronavirus outbreak in Adelaide.
South Australia’s public health director Nicola Spurrier praised Klang-native Dr Dharminy Thurairatnam (pictured) for detecting symptoms of the coronavirus in an elderly woman.
He said the state could have been dealing with “widespread community transmission” if it weren’t for the junior doctor.
“He heard this person cough a couple of times and thought, ‘They’re not going to get away without a swab,’ and he went ahead and cleaned the person.
“If we hadn’t done that, we would have found out in two to three weeks and we would have already had widespread community transmission,” Dr. Spurrier said.
Dr. Dharminy is now in a medi-hotel as she is a close contact of a coronavirus patient.
The doctor had detected a slight cough from a woman in her
80 when he showed up at Lyell McEwin Hospital in Adelaide’s north suburbs on November 20.
The woman had Covid-19 and the disease was later found to have spread to 25 of her family members and close contacts.
Both the woman and her husband, also in his 80s, had contracted the disease from their daughter, the cluster source who works as a cleaner at the cluster’s epicenter, Peppers Waymouth Hotel.
Dr. Dharminy, who moved to Adelaide last year, said she was honored to receive widespread praise for doing her job.
Adelaide’s Sunday Mail had published a two-page news report about her with the headline “A humble doctor broke the group,” while the ABC News headline was “South Australia’s coronavirus cluster detected by junior doctor. he heard a cough in the hospital emergency department. “
“I’m just a doctor in the emergency department trying to do the best I can with every patient I treat,” said Dr. Dharminy at The Playford Adelaide medi-hotel, where she is quarantined with 90 other staff and patients. .
“As for the hero part, I think every front-line worker is a hero during the pandemic.”
Despite feeling unwell with a sore throat and runny nose, Dr. Dharminy, who has not seen her husband, who works in a hospital in Singapore and their two children since March after the international borders closed, had two tests negative.
Dr. Dharminy, who graduated from medical school in 2006, previously worked in hospitals in Penang and Singapore.
He said the woman’s cough raised “alarm” and suspicion.
He added that if the woman had not coughed, “there would have been absolutely no need to do a swab test as she did not have any of the typical symptoms that we would look for in Covid-19 patients.”
Dr. Dharminy said praise for the hospital’s consultants and senior staff, who were committed to teaching and patiently guiding young clinicians like her.
“They often reiterate to us that we observe patients and look for subtle signs that patients do not mention or that they may think are irrelevant.
“That is what I did the night I treated the patient. I’d say it was a very high index of clinical suspicion, ”he said.
“Honestly, I was trying to do my job to the best of my ability.”
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