With Covid hospitals in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack complaining about the increasing cases, the Odisha government has asked districts not to rush their Covid patients to hospitals in these cities.
“Bhubaneswar Covid hospitals are being used by all other districts as referral hospitals. The facilities available in the cluster district will be exhausted first before deciding to move them to Bhubaneswar. The district doctor will inform the doctor of the Bhubaneswar Covid hospitals and obtain confirmation on the availability of the necessary facilities before sending the patient to Bhubaneswar, ”said development commissioner Suresh Mohapatra in a letter to the senior officials in charge of Management of Covid in the state.
Mohapatra, who last week chaired a meeting of senior health officials to discuss the situation, told officials that the Covid care facilities available at the district level should be fully utilized before referring the patient to Covid hospitals in Bhubaneswar. .
With 4,613 active cases in Bhubaneswar and 2,213 cases in the city of Cuttack as of Monday, the twin cities have now become Covid hotspots as hospitals in the two cities scramble to admit new patients. With only six ICU beds in Bhubaneswar’s Covid hospitals, it remains a challenge.
What has made the Covid situation in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack difficult is the flood of patients arriving at Covid hospitals from other critical districts such as Puri, Balasore, Mayurbhanj, Kendrapara and Jajpur due to the perception of better care and management.
In Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, almost 20 percent of the beds are occupied by patients from both cities, while the rest have been occupied by people from other districts.
Mohapatra has now instructed officials that Covid hospitals should be for moderately severe symptomatic patients only and those who are asymptomatic and with very mild to mild symptomatic cases should be in home isolation.
“The installation of home isolation should be further promoted and very mild to mild asymptomatic and symptomatic cases should invariably be allowed for home isolation. Covid hospitals should only host moderate to severe symptomatic cases, ”Mohapatra’s letter read.
To lessen the burden of Covid in the capital city, the government asked the KIMS hospital that has established Covid hospitals in the Bolangir, Mayurbhanj and Kandhamal districts to make functional ICUs available.
The government has also asked Covid hospitals in Bhubaneswar to convert some of the general beds to high dependency unit (HDU) beds to transfer stable patients from the ICU to the HDU, thereby increasing the availability of ICU beds. for critical patients who deserve it.
The government has also decided on a new discharge protocol according to which a patient with Covid would be clinically discharged after 10 days from the date of collection of the sample, as long as he has no symptoms during the last three days. The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation has been asked to prepare the list of these patients in the district of the ninth day and post it on the collectors’ WhatsApp group. The respective district collectors would have to collect those cured cases on the 10th day from the respective Bhubaneswar Covid Hospitals.
To address allegations of negligence by doctors and paramedics in treating Covid patients, the government also requested Covid hospital authorities to install CCTV in their ICU and general rooms for close surveillance of doctors and paramedics. . He also asked the laboratories that perform RT-PCR tests to mention the CT (Cycle Threshold) value in each of the positive samples so that the viral load can be analyzed in each case. Since the CT value determines the viral load of positive cases, patients with a lower CT value (that is, a higher viral load) can be prioritized for admission to Covid hospitals.
Meanwhile, Health Secretary PK Mohapatra called on all district collectors and municipal commissioners to close temporary medical centers, Covid care residences and Covid care centers in districts where occupancy has drastically decreased. The state government also asked all private hospitals in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Sambalpur, Berhampur and Rourkela Municipal to maintain a minimum of 50% of their general beds and 80% of ICUs for the treatment of Covid-positive patients.
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