While Jharkhand has already achieved its target of setting up at least 1,000 ICUs for children to combat a possible third wave of Covid-19, the health department in the state is now focusing on ways to increase manpower in medical facilities across districts in a bid to ensure that no patient goes unattended due to a crisis of doctors or healthcare workers, officials said on Wednesday.

The health department has sent proposals to all medical colleges in the state to seek services of nursing students, undergraduate medical students and junior resident doctors in treatment of patients during a possible third wave of the pandemic, state epidemiologist and the head of Jharkhand’s Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP), Dr Praveen Karn, said.

“Under the provisions of the Disaster Management Act, we have decided to seek services of medical and nursing students in case a third wave arrives and triggers a major spike in cases of infection,” said Karn, adding that as per the basic requirement, the state would need at least 32 doctors to treat 400 Covid patients on an average.

Another highly-placed official in the health department admitted that recruiting doctors in a short notice was not possible under the current circumstances, and seeking the help of medical students was a reliable way of combatting any kind of health crisis due to the pandemic.

Talking to The Telegraph Online, Dr Karn said that the state has set up surplus ICU beds for children, so it is unlikely to face an infrastructural crisis if a third wave hits Jharkhand.

“We have set up surplus ICU beds for children as well as adults to avert any crisis. The availability of medicines for treatment of Covid-19 has also been ensured,” said Karn.

As per records with the health department, the state has so far set up 1180 oxygen-supported beds for paediatrics patients and a total of 445 High Dependency Unit (HDU) beds for adults and children. Over 1,200 ICU beds for children have been readied across the state, a source from IDSP said.

It is feared that around 7 lakh of the 1.43 crore population in the age bracket of 0 to 18 years may get affected by Covid-19 in the third wave in Jharkhand. While 2.86 lakh of the patients are likely to be symptomatic, about 8610 of them may show severe symptoms and need intensive care, an expert committee for tackling the third wave of Covid-19 in Jharkhand has predicted on the basis of trends across the world and in India.