Green Corridor: Ambulance With COVID-Infected Senior Cop Races For Bhubaneswar Airport

Bhubaneswar: A green corridor was created on Tuesday for shifting COVID-infected Vigilance Director Debasis Panigrahi from a private hospital in Cuttack to Biju Patnaik International Airport in the Odisha capital.

He will be airlifted to Kolkata for advanced treatment from here.

The 1991-batch IPS officer was carried in a special ambulance with the support of an ECMO machine by a four-member team of doctors of a super speciality hospital in Kolkata. It will take around 20 to 25 minutes to reach the Bhubaneswar airport, sources said.

Cuttack Collector Bhabani Shankar Chayani and DCP Pratik Singh were present to supervise the entire process.

Briefing the mediapersons, the collector said that Ashwini COVID Hospital chairman Subrat Jena, Dr Maya Gantayat and Dr Manas Nayak informed him that the condition of the IPS officer was stable.

He will be taken to a super speciality hospital in Kolkata in an air ambulance, he said.

“Apart from being a police officer of the highest calibre, Panigrahi is a well-known poet and author. I wish him a speedy recovery,” the collector added.

Panigrahi was admitted to the Ashwini COVID Hospital in Cuttack on May 29 after he tested positive for the virus. He was shifted to the ICU and then kept on a ventilator after his condition deteriorated on Monday despite him being fully vaccinated in April.

A senior staff of the hospital said that the decision to shift him to Kolkata was taken as his oxygen level did not stabilize even though he was kept on a ventilator.

The IPS officer is a diabetic patient and needs urgent ECMO support and related treatment to improve his respiratory system, he said, adding that all his vital organs, barring lungs, are functioning normally.