Chennai: As the country is waging yet another war against coronavirus, courtesy the second wave of Covid-19, lot of developments are taking place. ‘NT’ complies the latest and important updates.
All hosptials
As the aggressive surge in Covid-19 cases continues across the country, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) announced that it had advised “all Central ministries to issue instructions to the hospitals under their control or their PSUs to set-up exclusive dedicated hospital wards or separate blocks within the hospitals for COVID Care.” These Ministries and PSUS had done so last year when the pandemic started.
The MoHFW noted, “These Hospitals/Blocks should have separate entry and exit points for the management of Covid-19 cases, to provide treatment services including specialised care for the confirmed Covid-19 cases. Additionally, these dedicated hospital wards or blocks have to be equipped to provide all supportive and ancillary services including Oxygen supported beds, ICU beds, ventilators and specialised Critical Care Units (wherever available), laboratory services, imaging services, kitchen, laundry etc., along with dedicated health work force.”
Oxygen matters
Even as the country continued to register record number of Covid-19 cases, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Friday, undertook a comprehensive review to ensure adequate medical grade oxygen supply and called for increased production.
Modi also took a detailed review of current situation of oxygen supply and projected use in the coming 15 days, across 12 states that have a high number of casesâMaharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.
Teaching people
Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan on Friday visited All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi to review their COVID-19 preparedness in light of recent surge in positive cases in the national capital. The minister also interacted with the patients under care at the Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Centre (JPNATC), the health ministry said in a statement.
Vardhan held a review meeting on the availability of beds and oxygenated beds at the general/ICU wards with the heads of the various departments engaged in treating Covid and non-Covid medical conditions.
‘Test’ing times
The Central government has said that RT-PCR tests ‘do not miss’ various variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, adding that several states did not send samples for genome sequencing along with clinical data of positive persons, despite being advised to do so.
The governmentâs clarification came amid media reports that RT-PCR tests are âfailingâ to detect new variants of the virus.
“Indian Genomic Consortium for Covid-19 has shared the genome sequencing data with states multiple times from 26th March 2021, onwards. Indian Genomic Consortium has so far processed more than 13,000 samples for Genome Sequencing,” the government said in a press release.