With the sudden surge in Covid-19 cases and amid the ‘Omicron’ scare, the West Bengal government has asked all the government as well as private hospitals to ramp up their health infrastructure to tackle the ‘emergency Covid’ situation.
Speaking to News18.com, State Health Secretary Narayan Swaroop Nigam, said, “Yes, there is an increase in the number of cases and we have taken all necessary steps to restrict the coronavirus from spreading it further and trying to break the chain. All the hospitals, doctors and healthcare workers were asked to pull up their socks. They were asked to stay protected from the virus because doctors and health care workers are our backbones to handle this situation.”
He said, “Many private and government hospitals have already increased their beds, extra Covid-19 wards were set up and they are ready with their critical care team to handle hospitalisation cases. So, the numbers of hospitalisation cases are not much but we are prepared to handle the pandemic.”
On Monday, senior officials at the health department had a meeting with the representatives of the private hospitals and they discussed measures to handle the rising number of Covid-19 cases. Various protocols to handle Omicron cases were also discussed.
It was learnt that the government has asked all the stakeholders to increase daily testing and set up a target of 55,000 per day in West Bengal.
“Each municipality and district were given specific targets for daily Covid-19 tests. For example, in North 24-Parganas and Hooghly district the health officials were given 4,000 tests each as a daily target to meet. Similarly, in the KMC area the daily target is 4,300,” a senior Health Department official said.
At present, there are a total of 203 dedicated Covid-19 hospitals including 196 government hospitals in West Bengal.
The total number of private hospitals requisitioned for treating Covid-19 is seven and there are 23,947 earmarked Covid-19 beds at various hospitals.
The number of hospitalisation cases has not gone up as it was reported only 2.14 per cent (total number of patients in hospitals 1,116) based on the latest data collected on January 2.
To handle critical cases, there are 4,139 Intensive Care Units (ICU) and High Dependency Unit (HDU) beds in Covid-19 Hospitals.
As a preventive measure to reduce the burden on health centres, more than 200 safe homes with 11,507 beds were set up across the State. Presently, the total number of patients in Safe Homes is 152.
Not the least adequate arrangements were also taken to handle Adverse Events Following Immunization (AEFI). The total AEFI cases in Bengal is 6,182, while 10,42,40,328 cumulative Covid-19 vaccination was done till January 2.
Speaking to the media persons, Mayor Firhad Hakim claimed that the Kolkata Municipal Corporation is also ready with its plans to contain the spread of coronavirus. “We have noticed that there are a number of infected people who do not have the choice to isolate themselves at home due to shortage of space. In that case, we are trying to shift them to Safe Homes. We are hopeful that in two to three days we will be able to complete the task. Also, today, we will announce the final list of containment zones in KMC areas.”
It was learnt that private/government hospitals like Medica Superspeciality Hospital, Woodlands Hospital, Infectious Disease Hospital, AMRI, RN Tagore Hospital and CMRI have set up Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and Intensive Therapy Unit (ITU) to handle the crisis. A separate set-up with beds and critical care experts was also put in place to treat people with Omicron cases in these private hospitals.
Founder Secretary of West Bengal Doctors’ Forum (WBDF) Dr Koushik Chaki, said, “The government should intensify efforts to alert people to maintain all the Covid-19 norms including wearing masks. The law enforcement agencies should ramp up their vigil through naka checking. Last but not least, the government should increase the testing to handle the situation more effectively.”
He said, “We are concerned about the number of healthcare workers, doctors, nurses and hospital staff who are getting infected with the Covid-19. Today, the government had a meeting with the private hospital authorities and they also expressed concern over this issue. At Chittaranjan Seva Sadan Hospital, nearly 30 doctors and six staff were tested positive; at Calcutta National Medical College & Hospital, nearly 70 doctors including the Principal tested positive and at Nil Ratan Sarkar Medical & Hospital, roughly 10 health staff and doctors were infected with the virus. I am worried because more infection rates among hospital staff, nurses and doctors mean more problems in handling more Covid-19 cases in the coming few months. The big question is who will take care of Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 patients if the doctors and health workers are down with Covid-19.”
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