The state health department has instructed medical colleges and hospitals at the tertiary level to be adequately equipped to handle Covid patients without being unnecessarily panicky.
The instruction came within hours of the death of a 72-year-old Covid patient from Nadia district at the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Beleghata on Saturday morning, the first Covid victim in three months since December 20.
Gobinda Kundu, the Nadia resident, was admitted to a private hospital in Salt Lake with comorbidities five days back. He was shifted to the Beleghata hospital on Friday after testing positive for Covid, health department officials said.
Doctors said Kundu had several comorbidities, including high blood pressure and COPD. He was shifted to the ICU and put on BiPap support, but he couldn’t survive.
Officials at Swasthya Bhavan said the Covid virus is constantly evolving and new variants are emerging, some of which may have acquired enough immune evasiveness to drive a temporary surge in cases, but there is no need to press the alarm bell as hospital admissions are still negligible.
Health department officials, however, pointed out that it is prudent to remain prepared given that some states are witnessing a rise in Covid cases.
“Covid has not been eradicated. We have asked the hospitals to remain equipped to handle Covid cases, along with those of other viral infections,” Siddhartha Neogi, state director of health services, told The Telegraph.
“A mock trial to assess the preparedness of a few hospitals was held recently. So we are completely prepared. There is nothing to worry about.”
There are now no Covid patients at most government hospitals in Kolkata.
“We have disbanded the Covid unit and the doctors and other staff have been shifted to other units,” said an official at Sambhunath Pandit Hospital, where a 100-bed Covid critical care unit was opened when the pandemic was raging.
“Covid has become an endemic disease, so there may be a few cases now. In several hospitals in the UK and Scandinavian countries, Covid patients are no longer kept in isolation.”
West Bengal’s readiness across tertiary hospitals comes days after Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote to the states asking them to remain vigilant on Covid as well as influenza-like illness and severe acute respiratory illness.
“Despite the low number of new cases, equally low number of hospitalisations and significant advances in COVID-19 vaccination coverage, there is still a need to remain vigilant and focus five-fold strategy of test-track-treat-vaccination and adherence to COVID appropriate behaviour,’’ Bhusan had written.
Officials in the West Bengal health department said they had instructed ID Hospital in particular to continue with the Covid set-up and be ready with all the required infrastructure to treat Covid patients.
“We have checked with all institutions and have found that there are a negligible number of positive cases across the state. We have decided to continue with the Covid set-up at ID Hospital,” said G.K. Dhali, head of the department of gastroenterology at SSKM Hospital and a member of the committee set up by the state government to advise the health department on Covid management.