Bhubaneswar: As cases rise rapidly, Odisha govt gears up to contain Covid-19
Representative image
BHUBANESWAR: With state capital Bhubaneswar adding large number Covid-19 cases daily, the state government on Friday decided to conduct intensive door-to-door surveillance in the city by dividing it into 10 zones, each zone bringing one lakh population under its watch soon. The government also decided to ramp up infrastructure by creating 500 more hospital beds in Bhubaneswar-Cuttack besides around 70 beds in Koraput.
A meeting on Bhubaneswar situation, chaired by chief secretary Asit Tripathy, asked the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation to chart a plan by dividing the city into 10 smaller units covering the entire population. In earlier strategies, the focus used to be on the slums. The BMC has been asked to give details of manpower need for the same.
The BMC will conduct high-visibility people-connect programmes in each zone to ensure people wear masks, maintain social distancing and follow respiratory etiquette while there will be door to door survey to ring-fence the vulnerable, additional chief secretary (health) Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra said. Cuttack may also do similar exercise.
Mohapatra said it was decided that the BMC’s toll free number for Covid (1929) and state toll free number 104 will be integrated and the team will ensure that each Covid patient on home isolation in city gets daily phones calls for follow up of their health conditions and shifting to hospitals whenever needed. Around 50 paramedical workers from other parts of Khurda district will be deployed in Bhubaneswar at the earliest to help in the purpose.
Another senior government officer, who attended the meeting, said while the number of new cases in the state capital is growing very fast compared to other towns and districts, a very low sero prevalence of around 5.15% in the city means it continues to be in the high rick zone, with a large population still awaiting to get infected. “The government has been keeping that in mind in its strategy,” he said.
The health department approved partial conversion of SCB Medical College and Hospital Cuttack and Capital Hospital Bhubaneswar besides SLN Medical College and Hospital Koraput as Covid care facilities.
The twin cities currently have around 2000 hospital beds for Covid. SCB will add around 200 general beds and 39 ICUs for Covid patients besides a dedicated 30-bed facility for Covid positive women needing obstetrics care. The Capital Hospital will dedicate 5 ICU beds while privately run Kanungo Institute of Diabetes (66 general beds and 34 ICU beds), Sun Hospital Cuttack (105 general beds and 30 ICU beds) and Srusti Hospital Cuttack (65 general beds and 15 ICU beds) will also be used for Covid care. Similarly, the Koraput medical college will have 70 beds for Covid.
The new deaths include five men and three women. Two persons each died in Ganjam, Khurda, Cuttack and Balangir districts while one person died in Rayagada. Another 2980 patients recovered raising number of cured patients to 90,331.