A 23-year-old house surgeon was found dead in her hostel room in Kilpauk Medical College on Friday morning, as per reports. 

The woman, who was a Compulsory Rotatory Residential Internship (CRRI) doctor, had visited Indonesia with her parents and was under home quarantine. She resumed duty at KMC on April 18 and had been staying at the college hostel since then. She was posted in the Obstetrics and Gynaecology department since April 18.

She was found dead when two of her friends tried to get her to open the door of her room on Friday morning. When repeated knocks and phone calls to her mobile did not elicit a response, her friends alerted the hostel authorities, who broke open the door and went in to find her unconscious. The authorities immediately alerted the police and rushed the woman to the hospital. However, she was declared dead on arrival at the hospital. She had last spoken to her parents, who reside in Vellore, on Thursday night.

An inquiry was also conducted on Friday by Tamil Nadu Health Secretary Dr Beela Rajesh who visited the hostel. The woman was reportedly not posted for COVID-19 duty and was assigned to work in Obstetrics and Gynaecology department. The authorities had extracted samples from her body and sent for COVID-19 testing, which returned negative. There were no physical injury marks on her body either. The postmortem conducted on her body was also inconclusive, as per a report in The Hindu.

The Kilpauk police have registered a case of unnatural death and are investigating.

Her death has come into the spotlight since many PG doctors in Chennai have been getting infected by COVID-19. The Madras Medical College recently shut its men’s hostel after a housekeeping staff working there tested positive for the coronavirus. Earlier, the Cardiology ward of the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH) was also temporarily closed after a PG doctor working in the ward contracted the infection.