Vikramaditya & Sarthak Kanjilall
Port Blair, July 27: Looking at the huge spike in Coronavirus cases in the recent days, the Health Department is boosting its health infrastructure and has already initiated measures to convert the Industrial Training Institute Hostel to 60 bedded hospital for COVID-19 patients.
For the information of the public, the Health Department has already accommodated 30 beds in the ITI Hostel building and more beds are being added.
Talking to Andaman Sheekha, Dr. Omkar Singh, Director of Health Services said that COVID19 patients, who are not critical will be kept in the ITI hostel COVID19 center and if anybody found to be serious, will then be shifted to the GB Pant Hospital. “We still have to accommodate a lot of things in the ITI Hostel including the manpower,” Dr. Singh added.
“As plan B, we are proposing to convert the workshop of ITI into 200 bedded hospital in coming days for Corona patients that is very close to the ITI Hostel. The problem in Andaman is that it takes time to execute a plan as for such plan we need to order for beds, then the beds will reach Andaman, it takes time,” said Dr. Singh
Not only this, the department has also procured 14 ventilators out of which 07 has already been installed and the other 07 will be installed soon, for which engineers will reach Port Blair by today or tomorrow.
When questioned Dr. Singh, whether the Health Department has sufficient numbers of the anesthetists, without any hesitation he agreed that the Health Department does lack anesthetists.”Our currently available anesthetists will have to work extra hours to manage all the 14 ventilators, as at present they don’t have any other choice,” Dr. Singh added.
