Swiftly marshaling the resources to tackle the pandemic, Deputy Commissioner Girish Dayalan held an urgent meeting here today with the representatives of government and private health institutions.Deputy Commissioner directed all the private hospitals to increase the tertiary COVID care bed capacity in order to cope up with the surge in cases. He said that as of now both government and private hospitals have sufficient beds to handle the spike but to be on guard a buffer of additional beds across level three (L3) centres needs to be in place, said he.Most of the institutions agreed at have greater number of ventilator equipped beds but others expressed inability sans requisite infrastructure. “District administration will facilitate setting up of L3 facility and would provide ventilators and paramedics to the private hospitals to meet the challenge unitedly”, assured Girish Dayalan. He informed that the District administration has procured 30 ventilators which would be installed by Thursday in the selected institutions. Deputy Commissioner said that enough of respiratory care infrastructure is in stock including the oxygen cylinders, oxygen - flow masks, hospital beds , ventilators and PPEs.
He made it clear that no COVID patient requiring tertiary care be declined admission without permission from Expert Referral Committee. The Expert Referral Committee of the district comprising of Civil Surgeon and the doctors from other government and private hospitals has access to bed status in every health institution on real time basis. Committee is empowered to shift a patient from L2 to L3 or vice versa depending on the condition of the patient so that right patient is at right place, said Deputy Commissioner.He informed that administration will conduct ‘moblile-testing’ by running vans to conduct random rapid tests in the areas around large industries and places like labour chowk so as to increase the testing range. Besides, the district has appointed dedicated teams who keep on surveying the areas specially the containment areas and keep a tab on the status of COVID spread in those areas.Deputy Commissioner said that we are fully committed to arrest the further spread of the infection and are prepared to meet any level of crisis but public support by means of observing due caution is must.