District officials gear up to face COVID third wave

Revive committees formed during the first two waves, Collector tells officials

The district administration is gearing up to tackle the predicted third wave and a meeting was chaired by the District Collector with all the stakeholders and the departments concerned here on Tuesday.

Addressing the meeting, District Collector A. Mallikarjuna informed the officials to revive the committees that were formed during the first and second waves, so that specific areas can be focussed upon.

During the first and the second waves, the district administration had formed about 20 special committees on containment, hospitals, manpower, pharmacy, laboratory, dead bodies management and others.

He urged the heads of the committees to get them back into shape and be ready for any eventuality.

He asked the District Medical and Health Officer to take stock of the pharmacy and see that the emergency drugs such as Remdesivir, Tocilizumab, steroids and blood thinners are stocked in sufficient numbers.

He also warned the management of the private hospitals for not repeating the mistakes that were made during the first and second waves. He reminded that there should not be any delay in the admission process, should not charge more than the prescribed fee and said that strict action would be taken if the vacancy position is not updated on a real time mode.

Mr. Mallikarjuna also cautioned the government nodal officers, who are attached to the private hospitals, to keep regular tab on the vacancy position and warned that action would be initiated if they failed to do so.

The District Collector also took stock of the availability of oxygen in the district and asked the three private hospitals that has the capacity of over 100 beds to get their PSA (Pressure Swing Adsorption) oxygen plants ready in a week’s time.

In the district, there are about 27 PSA plants and of them 14 are in government hospitals and the remaining are in private hospitals. Out of the 13 in the private sector, three hospitals are yet to get the plants operational.

He said that the need of the hour is to sign and review the MoUs with the producers of LMO (liquid medical oxygen) such as the RINL.

He also asked the representatives of the 74 private hospitals to strictly follow the 50% Aarogyasri norms and keep the beds and staff ready, as going forward Visakhapatnam would once again become a regional centre, as patients from neighbouring districts such as Vizianagaram, Srikakulam and East Godavari and even from other States such as Odisha would make their way to the city hospitals.

He also asked the officials to revive the call centres and get them operational and also keep the home isolation kits ready.

Cases go up

Meanwhile, the daily COVID-19 case load doubled from 40 to 80, here on Tuesday morning. With this, the total cases increased to 1,59, 206.

The district has been seeing a steady rise in the last one week. On December 28, the daily tally was just 7 and within one week’s time it has gone up to 80, with a steady rise of 30 to 40 cases on a daily basis, said District COVID Special Officer and Principal of Andhra Medical College P.V. Sudhakar.

The discharges on Tuesday were 10, taking the total discharges to 1,58,206 and active cases have once again crossed the 300 mark and stand at 306. No deaths were recorded, keeping the death count at 1,109.

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