Covid-19 mock drills: PMC says 2,204 beds ready in 123 Pune hospitals
The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) said that the 123 hospitals, where mock drills were conducted, include 10 government and 113 private centres
Mock drills were conducted at about 123 healthcare facilities in Pune on Monday to assess preparedness for treating Covid-19 patients following a directive from the Union ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW), officials said adding that 2,204 out of a total 5,805 beds at these Covid-19 hospitals are already functional.
After the spike in Covid-19 cases in India, MoHFW had announced nationwide mock drills on Monday and Tuesday to assess hospital preparedness. Both public and private hospitals are part of the drills.
The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) said that the 123 hospitals, where mock drills were conducted, include 10 government and 113 private centres. The officials said they have found that 258 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds out of 764 are ready and 228 Ventilator beds out of 527 are functional. Also 987 Oxygen beds out of 3,005 and 731 Isolation beds out of 1,509 are functional.
“We have 2,763 doctors and 7,221 nurses and our daily testing capacity is 956 currently. There are 848 Ayush doctors and 2,333 paramedical staff with 3.24 lakh Covid-19 testing kits available at these hospitals,” said Dr Suryakant Devkar, assistant health officer, PMC.
The PMC officials said there is an adequate stock of medicines such as Doxycycline, Paracetamol, remdesivir, tocilizumab and methylprednisolone, amongst others.
“The mock drill will help us check the operational readiness and help in filling gaps if any to strengthen healthcare facilities in the city. The prime focus of this exercise is availability of well equipped Covid-19 hospitals in the city with adequate capacity of isolation beds, Oxygen-supported beds, ICU beds and ventilator supported beds amongst others, besides the availability of doctors and well trained nurses, paramedics and healthcare workers,” said Dr Devkar.
“Due to the experience of past Covid-19 wave the team knows the challenges and how to tackle them. This will be an added benefit for us currently. But we hope no such situation is repeated in future. Also the Covid-19 patients that are reported currently very few require hospitalization. The numbers of deaths are meager in comparison to past waves,” said Dr Bhagwan Pawar, health officer, PMC.