Bhubaneswar: The Health department said that it has been preparing for a possible third wave of Covid-19 and working to set up the required infrastructure to deal with the situation in the next 2-3 months.
Health department Additional Chief Secretary PK Mohapatra Sunday said, “In the event of a third wave of the pandemic, the Odisha government has decided to improve the hospital infrastructure in the coming days. In the next 2-3 months, every state government medical college and District Headquarter Hospital (DHH) will have an oxygen plant and ECMO plant to cater to the needs of the hospital,” he said.
He added, “We have fixed a timeline of 2-3 months to complete the work. We are working to increase
the number of beds in the government set-ups and reserve a section of those for children.”
According to Mohapatra, the department earlier formed a task force for paediatric care in the event the third wave hits children in the state severely following the advice of the experts.
“In the next two months, all DHHs will have RT-PCR labs so that we are prepared for the third wave,” he said.
Mohapatra added that the state government has been working to recruit more doctors and nurses to bolster the state’s ability to deal with health emergencies. So far 786 doctors have been recruited, while the appointment of 5,695 nurses is in the pipeline.