Covid preparedness: Health centres submit reports to Karnataka govt

The health centres across state submitted reports on their Covid preparedness to the government, as a part of the mock drills on Monday and Tuesday.

The full report on the available facilities would be ready on Wednesday, said State Health Commissioner D Randeep.

Union health ministry had asked the states to conduct the mock drill given the recent rise in Covid cases and hospitalisations.

Data is entered in the Centre’s Covid portal and will be reviewed by the Centre’s Covid monitoring cell, a state health official said. “The mock drill is only for preparedness. There is no steep increase in hospitalisations currently. It was previously conducted in December, and we are updating the data now,” he said.

“We are not mandating hospitals to set aside any facility for Covid now. We are only collating data on the total facilities available with them.”

Health centres were supposed to enter details of the drugs available with them, PPE kits, oxygen facilities, testing capabilities, human resources, general and ICU beds, ventilators, etc.

From the government sector, data was collected from all health centres, ranging from primary health centres (PHCs) to medical colleges. Whereas in the private sector, only hospitals with over 50 beds were asked to give data, especially those that had supported the government in the previous Covid waves. Data would be collected from hospitals with fewer beds if need arises in future.

Within BBMP limits, data of all 141 PHCs, 26 maternity hospitals and six referral hospitals have been submitted, BBMP Chief Health Officer Balasundar said.

“Though PHCs have no beds, data on other facilities were collected from them. Maternity and referral hospitals had been used as Covid Care Centres (CCCs) in the previous waves. From the private sector, we collected data from around 156 hospitals and uploaded it in the portal,” he said.

Dr H D Radhakrishna, Medical Superintendent at CV Raman General Hospital, said that the hospital conducted the drill and submitted its report on Monday.

“The idea of the mock drill was to check if we will be able to admit and treat Covid patients if they come in high numbers today. We have the required facilities, and will be able to add more facilities in the ICU section if need arises.”