Coronavirus: UP plans dedicated Covid hospitals in private sector

To procure additional 200+ ventilators for emergency

The Uttar Pradesh government today announced plans to set up dedicated Covid-19 hospitals in the private sector to expand the network of health facilities to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.

According to UP medical, health and family welfare principal secretary Amit Mohan Prasad, the state was already in talks with a few private hospitals in this regard.

“The private hospitals have offered to be converted into dedicated Covid hospitals, if needed and we are already working on this idea,” he told the media in Lucknow this evening.

The state is also making arrangements for additional 200 ventilators to deal with a possible increase in the number of coronavirus cases needing critical life support.

The state has identified 5,000 isolation and 6,000 quarantine beds for corona patients and suspected cases. The state plans to ramp up the number of isolation and quarantine beds to 15,000 and 15,000-20,000 each respectively in the coming days.

So far, 68 positive cases have been identified in UP, of which 14 had been discharged after treatment, while the remaining cases were also of mild nature and needed no intensive care unit (ICU) support, he claimed.

A total of 2,284 samples have so far been sent for testing, of which 2,171 samples turned out to be negative.

Besides, Prasad said there was no ‘community spread’ of coronavirus in UP and all the positive cases pertained to those who had either arrived from outside or had come into direct contact with such people.

Meanwhile, the government today appointed a special officer for overseeing the medical arrangements in Noida and Ghaziabad given the highest number of cases in UP emerging from these two towns.

Prasad said the government would keep all the migrant labourers arriving from other states in the special quarantine facilities in their respective districts. They would be allowed to leave for home only after they serve the period, so as to contain any spread of the disease, he added.

“We will also send for testing any respiratory distress cases to preempt any coronavirus spread,” he added.

The state has a three-tier medical protocol to deal with coronavirus comprising community health centres, district hospitals and super specialty hospitals at the local/block, district and state levels respectively.

So far, UP Police have registered 5,183 first information reports (FIR) under Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for defying the lockdown orders pertaining to the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897.

Besides, 35 cases were registered under the Essential Commodities Act (ECA) against 53 persons. Twenty FIRs were also filed under charges of black marketing and hoarding across the state.

Meanwhile, more than 500 community kitchens have been set up across UP to distribute food packets to the poor, destitute and labourers, who have been hit hard owing to the ongoing lockdown.