E-Paper
Patna reels with 3,665 new cases and 29 deaths Army docs to step in to support ESIC hospital for Covid patients
PATNA Bihar on Thursday reported 15,126 new infections and 90 deaths during the last 24, taking the cumulative cases to 5,53,803 of which 1,15,151 were active cases
PATNA
Bihar on Thursday reported 15,126 new infections and 90 deaths during the last 24, taking the cumulative cases to 5,53,803 of which 1,15,151 were active cases.
Patna witnessed an explosion in cases with 3,665 people testing positive, the highest so far in a day, and reported 29 deaths during this period, taking the total death tally to 891. Gaya with 752 cases, Muzaffarpur (736), Nalanda (535) and West Champaran (533) were among the other leading contributors.
With the state capital being the hot bed, the Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) hospital at Bihta was set to add another 100 beds from Friday after promise of help from the Army. The hospital has been struggling with logistics issues in the management of Covid-19 patients, with 15 of its 40 doctors having tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.
“The army personnel have assured us of providing 50 doctors and around 20 paramedics from Friday to support us add another 100 beds at our hospital. With this, the total number of beds available for management of Covid-19 will go up to 250,” said Dr Manmohan Mishra, medical superintendent of the ESIC hospital on the outskirts of Patna.
Depending on manpower support from the state government and the army, the number of beds may later be scaled up to 200, allowing a total of 350 patients at our hospital, he said.
The 500-bed ESIC hospital is grossly underutilised, operating as it was with 150 beds when all major hospitals in Patna are displaying house full board due to heavy spike in cases in what is being referred to as the second wave of the pandemic.
The ESIC currently has no manpower support to run an intensive care unit (ICU) with ventilator support, important for the management of Covid-19 patients.
“We have just one senior resident from the department of anaesthesiology and one from the department of medicine. They are just not enough to manage ICU. Besides, of the 40 doctors, almost 20 are from the non-clinical disciplines like anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pathology, etc. They, too, have been deployed as consultants to oversee the junior and senior residents deployed at our hospital,” said Dr Mishra.
Besides, 15 of our 40 doctors at the hospital have tested positive for Covid-19, forcing them to be under home isolation, he added.
The ESIC hospital has received some support from the state government, which has deputed around 40 doctors and 113 paramedics.
Earlier, the Bihar government had on April 13 sought assistance from the army to fully operationalise the ESIC hospital.
The next day, a two-member team from the defence ministry had met Pratyaya Amrit, Bihar’s principal secretary, health, to assess the requirement to fully operationalise the ESIC hospital for treatment of Covid-19 patients. The defence team had then agreed in principle to extend help to the state government by providing 50 doctors to fully operationalise the 500-bed ESI hospital.
The Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) had stepped in to manage the 500-bed hospital during the first wave of the pandemic last year.
