Jharkhand govt builds Covid test wall after festive slip

RANCHI: After the culmination of the major festivals, including Chhath, the state health department issued a detailed guideline on Sunday to the deputy commissioners of all the districts in anticipation of a spike in the number of cases. This comes in the backdrop of several states seeing a surge in the number of fresh cases after the festivals, when intermingling among people was at its peak since the lockdown, ended.
Although the numbers have dipped in Jharkhand, the government wants to ensure preparedness before a possible second wave hits the state.The state recorded just 175 fresh cases between Friday and Saturday and clocked six more deaths in the same period.
The guidelines asked the districts to be prepared with medicines and keep ready adequate beds to treat Covid patients. Going by the earlier figures and assessing the vulnerability, each district has been asked to keep ready a certain number of beds with and without oxygen support, besides ICU facilities with ventilators.
Talking to TOI, state health secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni said, “As many states across the country saw a rise in the number of cases after the festivities, we thought the need to keep ourselves prepared. We had successfully handled the first wave, but if a second wave comes, we should be ready to tackle it.”
Kulkarni said, “We are also reviewing the stock of essential medicines as well as availability of ventilators at all districts. All the districts have been asked to co-ordinate with the state unit of the National Health Mission (NHM) in order to make necessary demand for medicines and other essentials.”
A detailed annexure along with the order was issued which directed respective districts to plan for the number of beds with oxygen, without oxygen support, ICU beds and ventilators. As per the order, a total of 11 districts were asked to keep ready more than 1,000 beds without oxygen. Ranchi has been asked to ready 5,500 beds and Deoghar has to keep ready 1,000 beds.
The rest 13 districts were asked to add bed capacity between 400 and 1,000 depending on the requirement.
The order also directed all covid-19 testing sites to be compliant with the latest guidelines of bio-medical waste management and directed the civil surgeons of the districts to ensure its proper disposal. The district administrations were also asked to ensure sufficient availability of PPEs, gloves N-95 masks and testing kits, including viral transport media kits for sample collection.
In order to ensure availability of trained healthcare workers, the districts were asked to conduct sufficient training sessions for doctors and nurses identified for critical Covid care and to follow proper roster system as per the guidelines.
The order also directed the authorities to ensure proper contact tracing and testing as per the state guidelines and to strictly follow testing of all probable suspects if there is a spike reported from a specific area.
In order to keep track of recovered patients, the order directed the districts who have post covid care and counselling centres to ensure its proper functioning.