E-Paper
Ghaziabad: Health dept asked to create more ventilator beds, bring down death rate
Ghaziabad:
Ghaziabad:
To bring down the rising number of deaths due to Covid-19, the divisional commissioner has asked the Ghaziabad health department to create at least 40 beds with ventilators in the district.
During a Covid-19 review meeting held on Friday in Ghaziabad, Anita C Meshram, the divisional commissioner, also asked the health officials to ensure testing of all those who have influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) in containment zones across the district.
At present, the district has a total of 28 beds with ventilators for Covid-19 patients, the officials said.
“The commissioner most importantly has directed to create 40 to 50 ventilator beds so that serious patients get timely treatment. For this, our officials are in talks with several private hospitals. It is proposed that the state government may acquire about 20% of their ventilator beds. For the acquired beds, prescribed payment will be made,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical officer, Ghaziabad.
The health department has given its nod for paid Covid-19 treatment to at least five private hospitals in Ghaziabad where there is availability of ventilator beds.
“Currently, in the government set-up, we have eight ventilators at our L2 hospital at Sanjay Nagar, while 20 more are available at our L3 hospital. Earlier, there have been several deaths when patients were getting referred to Meerut. The district administration and the health department have also been asked to work in close coordination so that patients are referred to appropriate hospitals -- L1, L2 or L3 -- as per their health conditions,” CMO said.
Apart from rising number of Covid-19 cases, which have seen a considerable spike in June, the death rate in Ghaziabad has also emerged as a main cause of concern for the district administration.
According to the official data, Ghaziabad had a total of 59 Covid related deaths to its tally till July 3 and stood third after Agra and Meerut in terms of fatalities. At present, Ghaziabad has a share of 7.75% of total deaths in the state.
Also, while Ghaziabad had witnessed 305 Covid-19 cases till May 31, the tally went up to 1,632 between June 1 and July 3 in the district.
On directions of the Uttar Pradesh government, a massive surveillance drive has been initiated in the six districts of Meerut division where thousands of teams are conducting door-to-door survey in order to find out people with symptoms of ILI and SARI, besides those having co-morbid conditions.
The health officials also said that they have made operational a 300-bed L1 category hospital at SRM University campus, Modinagar.
“The facility has been made operational with 300 L1 beds at present, and we are trying to get more beds in order to deal with rising cases. We are expecting that more cases will emerge after the surveillance drive has started on July 2 and we need to get more Covid beds for admission of patients. At present, we have to admit L1 patients to our L2 and L3 hospitals due to non-availability of L1 beds,” CMO added.
On the first day of the surveillance drive, 2,029 teams surveyed 135,460 houses in order to find out ILI and SARI cases.
The other teams also took up 775 rapid antigen tests and 34 patients were found positive, the officials said. The health department has also got in touch with various residents’ welfare associations and other social groups in order to ramp up antigen testing. Last month the district received 8,000 antigen kits, while another set of 11,000 test kits were received on July 1.
Under the surveillance drive, the Ghaziabad district has received a target of conducting 1,000 RT-PCR samples and 3,000 tests with the help of antigen kits. On July 2, the health teams collected 990 samples for RT-PCR test, the officials said.
Meanwhile, state officials said that they had conducted random sampling of 5,508 persons in 75 districts of UP recently, in which vendors and those employed at dhabas were covered.
“Of 75 districts, 50 positive cases were found in 19 districts. The random sampling is being done for different vulnerable groups and this is also creating awareness among them about how to deal with Covid-19,” said Amit Mohan Prasad, UP’s principal secretary (health).
