Bhubaneswar: In a circular issued to district collectors in Odisha, the Health and Family Welfare (H&FW) department Thursday mentioned that the state is likely to witness about 19,000 new cases during the peak days of an expected third wave of the Covid-19 outbreak.
According to a senior official, the daily spike could be 1.5 times higher as compared to the number of cases reported during peak days of the second wave. Additional Chief Secretary of the department PK Mohapatra wrote in his letter that the probable third wave of Covid-19 might prevail in the state for nearly two and half months.
Also read: ACF Soumya death: NHRC seeks status report in six weeks
Mohapatra asked district collectors to stay prepared till March 2022. The state government earlier issued guidelines to spend the Centre’s grant of Rs 800 crore under Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness Package Phase II in order to face the third wave.
Mohapatra also directed district collectors to complete commissioning of necessary Covid care infrastructure by December 2021.
Notably, under the Phase-II emergency package, Odisha government earlier approved Rs 94.93 crore for procurement of RT-PCR and rapid antigen test kits, Rs 5 crore to set up 16 new RT-PCR laboratories at respective district headquarters hospitals (DHH), Rs 30 crore to purchase essential medicines for effective Covid-19 management, Rs 75.18 crore on establishment of dedicated paediatric care unit (DPCU) in every DHH of Odisha and Rs 5 crore for establishment of paediatric Centre of Excellence (CoE) at state as well as Central government hospitals.
PNN