The state health department has asked hospitals to be prepared for an impending third wave of Covid and said that the situation could turn serious within a week.
A senior official of the department told heads of hospitals that the number of daily cases could go up to 35,000 a day in the peak of the this wave considering the Omicron variant is highly transmissible.
Ajay Chakraborty, the state’s director of health services (DHS), asked the hospital heads to ensure that health workers do not fall sick as their presence would be crucial in fighting the third wave.
“The DHS sent a WhatsApp message on Thursday morning where he asked all hospitals to remain prepared for the third wave. He said that hospitals must be prepared to take in a large number of Covid patients,” said the head of a private hospital.
In the message, Chakraborty cautioned that the daily new cases in the state could go up to 35,000 in the peak of the third wave.
He told the hospital heads that 4,100 cases were reported in a day at the peak of the first wave in October 2020. In the peak of the second wave, about 22,000 daily cases were reported. The high transmissibility of the Omicron variant could lead to daily new cases going up to 35,000 a day, he wrote.
On Wednesday, 540 new Covid cases were reported from Kolkata, while the state reported 1,089 new cases.
The number of daily new cases have more than doubled in the city compared to 10 days or a fortnight ago. On December 14, Kolkata reported 161 new Covid cases, while 552 new cases were reported from the state. On December 23, 178 new cases were reported from the city and 516 from the state.
Chakraborty said the Omicron variant was spreading “like a fire and very soon, maybe within a week, we will again fall in very serious trouble”.
The Telegraph has read the message the DHS sent to the hospital heads.
Chakraborty also said in the message that some evidence suggesting local transmission of the omicron variant has been found in Kolkata. It has been reported earlier that five persons without any foreign travel history were found positive for Omicron.
“This is not a statement to the press and media. Neither is it meant to scare anyone. This is merely an anticipation shared with hospitals so that we are prepared to deal with a third wave if the numbers go up to 35,000 new cases in a day,” Chakraborty told The Telegraph on Thursday evening.
“We cannot deny that we had some deficiencies in the second wave. People struggled to get hospital beds. So we are telling hospitals to be prepared in advance,” he said.
In his message, Chakraborty had said that the number of Covid cases was doubling every day in the last few days.
“Health workers must take extra precautions not to fall sick because without them we cannot fight this dreadful pandemic,” he said in the message.