Gzb health department plans shuffling of manpower to deal with any rise in Covid-19 cases

Ghaziabad:

Ghaziabad:

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Anticipating a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases in coming days, officials of the district health department are now in search of bigger isolation and quarantine facilities and planning to reshuffle available manpower for optimum use.

The Ghaziabad district added another four positive cases to its total tally, which stood at 137 till Sunday night. The new cases include two patients from Vaishali, the officials said.

At present, the district has 166 Covid beds in two L1 category hospitals and 100 beds in an L2 category hospital. Besides, a 400-bed L3 category facility has also been approved by the state government.

“Since we have limited manpower, we wish to make its optimum use in case there is a sudden rise in number of positive cases. We have planned that some teams comprising 25 doctors and other staff each, who till now were looking after patients at 30-bed L1 category hospital at Muradnagar, will be shifted to the new 200-bed L1 category facility at Niwari,” said Dr NK Gupta, chief medical officer.

The health department has also identified 76-bed ESI Hospital at Sahibabad which is taken care of by the staff of the same hospital. To fine tune the St Joseph hospital in Nandgram, another L1 hospital with 60 beds, the CMO said that four government doctors will be sent there while the rest of the staff of the hospital will suffice.

“In all, we have 166 beds of L1 category hospitals and 100 beds of L2 category government hospital at Sanjay Nagar. The teams at Sanjay Nagar hospital are not being used currently as there are no patients admitted. Besides, a 400-bed L3 category facility has also been approved by the state government and we will make use of their doctors and staff members,” Gupta said.

Officials of the Sanjay Nagar government hospital said that they have two teams comprising 53 members each to look after complicated cases of Covid-19.

“At present, we have no cases. A government doctor who has turned positive was with us for few days at our isolation ward and another female patient was here for three days. But our teams are undergoing training regularly. The teams are on standby and ready to be deployed if the situation demands,” said Dr Naresh Vij, chief medical superintendent of the hospital.

Apart from the L1 category dedicated Covid hospitals, the health department has also identified a 100-bed facility as L1 attached hospital at Kadrabad and another 500 bedded facility at Modinagar, which will also function as L1 attached hospital.

Under the UP government’s three-tier hospital set-up to deal with Covid-19 positive patients, the L1 hospitals are for normal patients while the L1 attached hospitals are meant for dealing with asymptomatic patients. The complicated cases are referred directly to L2 hospitals, while L3 category hospitals deal with patients requiring critical care.

“With the identification of these hospitals, we have reached a level where optimum use of manpower available with us can be used. Similarly, we are in search of bigger quarantine centres with capacity of 500-1,000 beds. In all, we have about 1,683 beds available at our different quarantine centres. But the same manpower has the capacity to cater to bigger facilities. So, we have requested the administration to search for bigger centres as Ghaziabad has a number of engineering, medical and management colleges,” the CMO said.

District magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey could not be reached despite repeated attempts for a comment.

The UP government had recently asked the districts to arrange for 15,000-20,000 capacity quarantine centres in each district and also directed building of about 52,000 Covid beds across the state to deal with any crisis.

The CMO also said that they have about 260 teams comprising three members each who are taking up survey and surveillance in hots pot and containment areas.

“On this count, we have limited manpower as we have to divert our staff meant for carrying on vaccination drives directed by the government,” Gupta added.

Overall in UP, the tally of active cases of Covid-19 stood at 1,884 till Sunday evening and 1,504 patients were discharged so far. Overall, 9,003 people are in different quarantine centres across the state, the officials said.