Amid the ongoing speculation on the third Covid-19 wave, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Thursday directed the officers concerned to ensure ‘Covid-19-appropriate’ health infrastructure in the state.
The Chief Minister presided over a meeting regarding the preparedness for third wave and reviewed arrangements of all medical facilities pertaining to Covid-19, like ventilator beds, oxygen equipped beds, ICU beds, availability of oxygen cylinders and concentrators, injections i.e. Remdesivir, Amphotericin, Tocilizumab.
Health Minister Anil Vij was also present during the meeting. The CM directed the officers to conduct a gap analysis in the Health Department to strengthen the infrastructure and appoint an adequate number of doctors, nurses and paramedics.
He asked the officials of the Health Department to sensitise the medical staff and ensure rationalization of staff. He further asked them to augment the medical staff so that there is no shortage in the near future.
Besides this, he asked the officers to conduct an exercise to check the present availability of ICU beds, ventilator beds and oxygen-equipped beds, necessary medicines, neonatal ventilators and paediatric ventilators so as to bridge the gap in present healthcare infrastructure.
Sharing concerns with regard to Covid-19 paediatric cases, the Chief Minister directed the officials of the Health Department to anticipate the health infrastructure requirement to treat Covid-19 paediatric cases and make necessary arrangements accordingly. He also asked the officers to expedite the process of appointment of doctors, nurses and paramedics as ensuring superlative health services to the people of the state is the priority of the government.
During the meeting, the Chief Minister was apprised that the state has a testing capacity of 24500 per day in 20 existing government testing laboratories and a testing capacity of 71900 per day in 22 private laboratories in the state. The Covid fatality rate of Haryana is 1.23 per cent so far while the national fatality rate is 1.6 per cent.
It was informed that Sentinel Surveillance (a surveillance which aids in the development of a real-time practical framework to tackle the ongoing, fast evolving pandemic challenge) was started in April 2021. As a part of which 15 samples of each sentinel site are sent fortnightly for whole-genome sequencing.
During the meeting, it was also informed that Genome Testing Laboratory will soon be set up in PGIMS, Rohtak.