Technical Challenges to the Delivery of Quality Radiation Therapy During the COVID-19 Unlock Period: Medical Physics Perspective

Abstract

The Covid-19 onset was very pandemic for all of society all over the world. To overcome this state of affairs, the country’s government had done the lockdown in their respective countries. The lockdown helped the people from spreading the Covid-19 virus among people, however, it affected another part of life such as people becoming unemployed. The health care sector was affected a lot by the lockdown as the patient faced lots of problems such as reaching the hospital, meeting the concerned staff, getting the treatment on time, etc. Covid-19 affected the cancer patients most, during the lockdown. After awareness of Covid-19, when the world has started towards the unlock down. With the little negligence of people, the world has started facing the peak of Covid-19. And, there was more crowd in the health care sectors, therefore the hospital staff got infected a lot, as the patient treatment cannot be carried out from home. Cancer patient treatment, which comes under radiotherapy, has already existed in chronic medical conditions, such as lung cancer patients, esophagus cancer patients, heart disease patients, etc, has a higher risk of Covid-19 infection. During treatment, when such a patient comes in contact with a radiation oncologist, medical physicist, and radiation technologist, then some of the staff get infected through patients. To prevent such spread, all the medical staff should strictly follow the rules made for staff. In this article, we are sharing the challenges for the medical physics team and some suggestions during patient care.

Keywords

• medical physicist challenges during covid-19
• unlockdown in covid-19
• cancer patient treatment in unlock period