Bhubaneswar: The state government, Tuesday, said that there is no ceiling on funds when it comes to management of COVID-19 and procurement of medical equipment.
State Industries Principal Secretary Hemant Sharma in the official briefing of the government on COVID-19 said that there is no limit of funds to be spent on tackling the virus and the related procurements.
“There is no ceiling that we can spend only till Rs 630 crore for COVID-19 management in the state. Funds are unlimited when it comes to the health disaster management. The state government is planning to make it ready to face the worst,” he said.
Sharma said that the state has also taken extraordinary measures during the last few months to expedite the preparedness of the government to combat the global pandemic. The official said that the market supplying medical equipment for COVID are now bombarded with the higher demands of the same, making the medical trade a ‘suppliers market’.
“This is a time when the world is demanding the same products. This has turned the medical trade into suppliers’ market. In many cases like for the Viral Transport Medium (VTM) there is only one supplier. We have taken special measures to win the confidence of the suppliers to help our state,” he said.
Sharma said that the concept of instant and faster payments helped to get uninterrupted supplies from them. “Many suppliers are often reluctant to work with government due to payment issues. We worked with the issue by offers like faster payment and even cases instant payments,” he said.
He also said that in many cases extraordinary steps were taken by the government to ensure uninterrupted supply of medical equipment. “For the transport of key medical equipment from Nagpur we had to take assistance of Air Force to airdrop us the consignment as the airport there was defunct. This ensured increase in testing of COVID-19 on time,”
Sharma also said that in many cases aircraft from the state were roped in for the installation of high-end machines for COVID-19 testing.
“When we got new set of COBAS machine, needed for testing there was an issue of installation as the expert engineers were living in Gurgaon and other areas. We send state aircraft to bring 22 engineers to get it done during lockdown curbs,” he said.