The district administration on Monday appointed magistrates for private hospitals and nodal officers for government run facilities to ensure the availability of beds for Covid-19 patients.

Dhanbad Deputy Commissioner, Uma Shankar Singh held a meeting with all magistrates of private hospitals instructing them to ensure normal bed provision for asymptomatic patients, beds with oxygen support for symptomatic patients or patients with mild symptoms and ICU beds for critical patients.

“If the beds are available in the hospital then the patient reaching the centre has to be admitted at any cost but even if beds are not available, the concerned magistrate of the respective hospital will have to coordinate with the magistrate of a nearby private hospital to ensure the patient is admitted,” said Singh during the meeting.

The state nodal officer for Hospital Bed Management for Covid-19 has been instructed to provide all necessary information with regard to availability of beds at government and private Covid treatment centres from all the districts to ensure real time monitoring of Covid beds.

The administration on Sunday launched Covid treatment in 14 more private hospitals other than the six existing centres bringing the total number of private covid treatment centers to 20 and increasing the total number of beds to 1144. With the addition of 14 new private hospitals the number of ICU beds in the district for Covid patients has also increased to 180 from 90.