The primary healthcare centre on the IIEST Shibpur campus has been turned into a Covid-care unit with beds, oxygen support and isolation facilities after several residents, including teachers and staff, tested positive and had trouble finding beds in hospitals the institute has tie-ups with.

The unit became operational on Wednesday.

Since the beginning of April, at least 15 people on the campus have tested positive for Covid-19.

The institute was forced to scrap its decision to call its students back to the campus for laboratory work and supplementary tests because of the rise in cases.

Atharba Thakur, one of the medical officers looking after the Covid-care unit, said 16 beds have been set up on the unit’s first-floor.

“There are eight beds each in the male and female wards — four for confirmed cases and four for cases found unconfirmed in the rapid test but whose RT-PCR results are awaited,” said Thakur.

Rapid test facilities have been set up on the ground floor of the unit.

There are cases where a person has tested negative in the rapid test but his or her oxygen saturation level has dropped, another medical officer said. “Samples of such people will be sent to the labs the institute has tie-ups with for the RT-PCR test. If the report confirms the infection, the person will be shifted to the confirmed cases ward, if beds are available. We are trying to arrange an oxygen concentrator,” he said.

In a worst-case scenario, if beds are unavailable or a patient’s condition deteriorates severely, he or she will have to be admitted elsewhere, said assistant registrar Bivore Das.

The doctors running the unit will be able to determine the cases that can be treated through home isolation, director Parthasarathi Chakrabarti said. “For such cases there would be telemedicine facilities,” he said.

Chakrabarti said a lack of beds in hospitals came in the way of the family members of an official trying to get admitted last week and this was the trigger behind setting up the unit on the campus.

“This will work as a back up to some extent at a time when cases are on the rise on campus. The unit armed with preliminary facilities, Covid-related medicine and oxygen support is expected to provide the critical care,” he said.