The Centre has asked the Central paramilitary forces to set up facilities across the country to quarantine as many as 5,440 persons amid the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The central forces have also made arrangements for isolating 75 patients.
While the ITBP quarantine facility at Chhawla in the national capital is operational and successfully quarantined and discharge hundreds of evacuees from Wuhan (China) and other places, the other paramilitary forces have created threshold to set up such facilities within 24 hours, a senior Union Home Ministry official privy to the development said.
Testing kits will be provided to the quarantine facilities on need basis through Ministry of Health (DG Health Service), an official said.
Apart from monitoring routine health parameters of the inmates by a team of qualified doctors and paramedical staff, these facilities will be equipped with provision of meals and indoor games.
The directive to set up the quarantine facilities across the country was taken following a decision of Group of Ministers and the order was circulated through a letter from the office of the Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba and Health Secretary.
With a provision of 1,940 beds, the Border Security Force (BSF) leads the pack followed by 1,800-bedded facilities by the Central Reserve Police Force and a capacity to quarantine 1,000 persons by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP).
Likewise, the National Security Guards (NSG) and Central Industrial Security Force CISF will set up facilities with 300 beds each to quarantine suspected coronavirus patients.
The Sasashtra Seema Bal (SSB) will set up a 100-bedded facility facility at Yelki (near Nanded in Maharashtra).
Besides the Chhawla camp in Delhi, the ITBP will also have a similar facility in Greater Noida (Uttar Pradesh). The ITBP has been allocated 20-bedded isolation wards.
The NSG will have its quarantine facilities at Manesar and Hyderabad. It will also have isolation facility for five patients.
The BSF facilities will be set up 800-bedded quarantine facility at Baikunthpur (Silliguri, West Bengal), Jodhpur (400 beds), Indore (200 beds), Chakur ( Maharashtra, 200 beds), Kharkan (Punjab, 120 beds), Hazaribagh (Jharkhand, 100 beds), Srinagar (20 beds), Jalandhar (20 beds), Tekanpur (Madhya Pradesh, 20 beds), Kolakata (20 beds), Kadamtala (20 beds) and Agartala (20 beds). The BSF will also have isolation wards for 10 patients.
The CRPF quarantine facilities will be located at 19 locations across the countries. While Pinjore (Haryana) will have 190-bedded facility, Guwahati, Jammu, Narela, Neemuch, Kolkata and Imphal each will have 150-bed facility. Nagpur will have 120-bed facility followed by Ranchi (75 beds), 209 CoBRA (75 beds), Mokamaghat (75) and Muzaffarpur (75). Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Coimbatore, Bengaluru, Pallipuram, Hyderabad and Gandhinagar will have bedded facility at the campuses of CRPF. The CRPF will have the most number of isolation wards with a capacity to lodge 40 patients.
The CISF facility for quarantine will be located at Shivganga near Madurai.