Bhubaneswar: A day after issuing guidelines for January to break the COVID-19 infection chain in Odisha, Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra directed the private and government hospitals to complete preparations within seven days in the wake of a possible third wave.
At a high-level meeting with senior officials and health experts, Mahapatra reviewed preparedness in health facilities across the state. He directed the private hospitals to join hands and keep the facilities prepared for admitting and treating patients in case of emergency.
Mahapatra asked hospitals to keep beds, ICUs, ambulances etc prepared to shift and admit COVID patients on priority with adequate trained manpower.
The district officials were directed to make the rapid response teams, call centres, ambulances and other necessary infrastructure functional to tackle with the possible third wave situation.
Odisha already has dedicated COVID hospitals at Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Berhampur, Angul, Talcher, Puri, Ganjam, Sambalpur, Jajpur, Kendrapada, Sundargarh, Baripada, Balangir, Kandhamal, Rourkela and Gajapati. Apart from these, the Chief Secetary also directed to keep all Government hospitals kept ready for treating corona patients.
Informing about the preparations, Additional Chief Secretary (Health) RK Sharma said, 55 COVID hospitals were functioning during the second wave of the pandemic along with other facilities where 94,000 beds were operational. Similarly, 3,500 ICU and HDU beds and 1,102 ventilators were functional during the period.
Development Commissioner PK Jena, Public Health Director Dr Niranjan Mishra and officials of civic bodies, hospital and different district administrations attended the meeting.
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