Punjab readies Covid contingency plan to deal with major outbreak

Asymptomatic patients and those with mild symptoms to be isolated in hostels of educational institutions, patients with co-morbidities to be treated in govt medical colleges or PIMS, Jalandhar

With the number of the Covid-19 cases and casualties on the rise in the state, the Punjab health department has come up with a contingency plan to deal with the possibility of a major disease outbreak.

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As per the plan, all asymptomatic patients and those with mild symptoms will be kept in hostels of various educational institutions. The district administrations have prepared a list of hostels for the purpose. A number of hostels have already been made ready to isolate the patients.

Also, according to the plan, patients with co-morbidities (one or more additional conditions often co-occurring with a primary condition) will be immediately shifted to either of three government medical colleges in Patiala, Amritsar and Faridkot or the Punjab Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), Jalandhar, after testing positive for the virus.

Patients with moderate symptoms will be treated at civil hospitals.

Earlier, when the number of people testing positive for the virus was low, all patients were kept at district hospitals or the special Covid-19 treatment centres set up by the administration concerned.

But after a sharp rise in the number of cases this month, the health department was compelled to change the strategy and spare space for patients with moderate and severe symptoms in the government facilities.

The situation aggravated after June 1 with 2,098 new cases, including 61 deaths, recorded in the state since.

So far, the state’s total tally of cases is 4,397, including 105 deaths.

Even as the new guidelines of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) stipulate that asymptomatic patients can be kept in home isolation, the state health authorities have decided to keep such persons in institutional quarantine as some people tend to violate home-isolation norms, said a senior health department official tasked with Covid-19 supervision.

“There have been instances when asymptomatic patients kept in home isolation broke the quarantine norms and later all of their e family turned out to be positive,” he said.

“The idea of the contingency plan is to reduce the risk of keeping patients in a place where we don’t have facilities for the serious stages,” said Punjab Covid-19 nodal officer Dr Rajesh Bhaskar.

MoU SIGNED WITH

3 PRIVATE HOSPITALS

The health department has signed a pact with three private healthcare facilities — Christian Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) Ludhiana, Amar Hospital and Sadbhawna Hospital (both in Patiala) to provide tertiary treatment of serious Covid-19 cases.

“These hospitals will treat the patients and will be paid by the state government as per the Central Government Health Scheme rates,” said a health department official.