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Bengal govt to start measuring oxygen levels of home-quarantined Covid-19 patients
ground level health workers, including ASHA workers and civic health workers will be equipped with these oximeters along with thermal guns. They will move from door-to-door and measure the oxygen level and body temperature of people quarantined at homes and safe houses.
The West Bengal government will be procuring more than 10,000 oximeters to start measuring oxygen levels of home-quarantined people so that citizens could be discouraged from occupying hospital beds.
The ground level health workers, including ASHA workers and civic health workers will be equipped with these oximeters along with thermal guns. They will move from door-to-door and measure the oxygen level and body temperature of people quarantined at homes and safe houses.
“We have already procured around 2000 oximetres. Another 10,000 would be procured. This is a new initiative we are taking on the advice of the chief minister to discourage people from occupying hospital beds. The ASHA workers have been doing house-to-house surveys to detect ILI and SARI cases. Now they will also check oxygen levels,” said a senior official of the state health department.
Current guidelines say that Covid-19 patients have to be admitted to hospitals if their oxygen saturation drops to 90% or below (normal is 95 to 100%). Covid-19 patients with severe symptoms or with critical co-morbidities are advised to get admitted in hospitals. Patients with mild symptoms are treated at home.
A series of steps, starting from setting up of ‘safe houses’ and launching ‘satellite health centres’ in hospitals, have been taken to keep hospital beds free for critically ill patients.
“But the demand for hospital beds is rising as the disease is spreading. Everyone wants to be admitted in a hospital even if the person is asymptomatic or having mild symptoms. We are getting calls almost every day,” said a senior bureaucrat of the state government.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) too will purchase oximeters to randomly check the oxygen levels of residents through its ground level health workers.
“While some councillors in their individual capacity have already purchased the machines and have started checking the oxygen level of quarantined people, the civic body would be purchasing oximeters to start checking the oxygen level of residents,” said Atin Ghosh, former deputy mayor and presently a member of the board of administrators that run the KMC.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has also asked housing societies to purchase oximeters so that residents can regularly check the oxygen level in their blood.
“The housing societies may keep two to three oximeters in their offices so that anyone can check the level of oxygen in the blood. The number of Covid-19 cases in housing societies is rising and this would discourage people from going to hospital if their oxygen level is above the required limit,” she said earlier this week.
