The state health department on Friday asked chief medical officers, heads of hospitals and medical colleges to ensure minimal referral from districts to Calcutta, especially children with acute respiratory trouble, following the detection of a new sub-variant of Covid-19, which has already triggered a fresh threat in states like Kerala and Karnataka.
Senior health officials, including department secretary N.S. Nigam and director of health services (DHS) Siddhartha Niyogi on Friday conducted a videoconference with health officials in the districts and heads of the hospitals across the state to review the Covid-19 preparedness and take stock of the situation.
“In that meeting, the health officials in districts and outskirts in Calcutta were asked to minimise the practice of referring patients to the city hospitals. The issue referral of children were specially mentioned following an experience in March this year, while rampant referral from districts made the city hospitals overburdened and resulted in deaths of at least 19 minors,” said a senior health official, present at the meeting.
The state health department had to face strong criticism over deaths of at least 19 children suffering with acute respiratory troubles.
“The districts have infrastructure to handle such patients. The senior health officials asked them to ensure all of the facilities are functional for providing treatment,” he added.
In Friday’s videoconference, the senior health officials took stock of the situation of infrastructure related to the treatment of Covid-19, including Critical Care Units (CCUs), oxygen cylinders, the number of beds available for the treatment of Covid patients and patients with Sari (severe acute respiratory infections) and Ili (influenza-like illnesses).
“If we can ensure proper treatment of Sari and Ili patients, we can combat the mortality rate because of the fresh sub-variant of the Covid-19 as those are treated as vulnerable” said a chief medical officer of one of the south Bengal districts.
Although the Bengal health department had stopped releasing official data on Covid-19 cases from January 28, a source said the
state found eight patients positive with Covid-19, including a six-month-old child from Bihar.
“The sample of three patients including that of the child has been sent for genome sequencing at the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in Nadia’s Kalyani to confirm whether the virus is of new sub-variant. If the genome sequencing found a new sub-variant, the state may issue a specific guideline to follow,” said a source.
He said that the problem with this new variant is its high transmissibility. “Otherwise, the virus was not found as virulent, so far.”
In that meeting, the health officials were also asked to restrict leaves of doctors and health staff during this festive season.
An official said it was usual that the government employees including health staff and doctors go on leave during this period of Christmas and New Year. The concerned heads were asked to restrict leaves amid apprehension of a surge in Covid numbers.
“Today’s situation is not worrying but we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. If the number increases in the coming two or three days and there is found paucity of human resources, it would be a tough task to handle the situation,” said the official.
From the last week of December, the state government organised several fairs including the mega event, Gangasagar Mela at Sagar Island, which witnessed a congregation of lakhs in January. The people in Calcutta and various districts also celebrate Christmas and New Year amid much fanfare.
“We don’t want to spread panic among the people during this festive time by issuing a guideline or protocol till before the situation in the state goes wrong. But we are ensuring a robust preparedness to combat any kind of situation,” said a senior health official in Calcutta.
