Chandigarh, July 1 – With the ongoing speculations of a third COVID wave, Haryana Chief Minister, Sh. Manohar Lal today alerted the health officers to ensure ‘COVID-appropriate’ health infrastructure in the state. The Chief Minister took detailed updates of all medical facilities pertaining to COVID, like ventilator beds, oxygen equipped beds, ICU beds, availability of oxygen cylinders and concentrators, injections i.e. Remdesvir, Amphotericin, Tocilizumab so that there will be no shortage of any equipment or medication for the people of the state amidst the COVID-crisis.

These directions were given during the meeting with regard to preparedness for third wave under Chairmanship of the Chief Minister. Health and Home Minister, Sh. Anil Vij was also present in the meeting. A detailed presentation was given by Additional Chief Secretary, Health, Sh. Rajeev Arora wherein he shared information about the logistics, present facilities available in hospitals, stock of medicines, oxygen concentrators, hospital beds and preparedness of health facilities for future.

Haryana Chief Minister, Sh. Manohar Lal has directed the officers concerned to conduct a ‘gap analysis’ in the health department to strengthen the infrastructure and appoint adequate number of doctors, nurses and paramedics. He asked the officials of the Health Department to sensitise the medical staff and ensure rationalization of staff. He further asked them to augment the medical staff so that there is no shortage in the near future.

Besides this, he asked the officers concerned to conduct an exercise to check the present availability of ICU beds, Ventilator beds and Oxygen-equipped beds, necessary medicines, neonatal ventilators and paediatric ventilators so as to bridge the gap in present healthcare infrastructure. Sharing concerns with regard to COVID-paediatric cases, the Chief Minister asked the officials of the Health Department to anticipate the health infrastructure required to treat COVID-paediatric cases and make necessary arrangement accordingly.

He asked the officers to expedite the process of appointment of doctors, nurses and paramedics as ensuring superlative health services to the people of the state is the priority of the government.

During the meeting, the Chief Minister was apprised that the state has a testing capacity of 24500 per day in 20 existing government testing laboratories and a testing capacity of 71900 per day in 22 private laboratories in the State.

The Chief Minister was also apprised that Sentinel Surveillance (a surveillance which aids in the development of a real-time practical framework to tackle the ongoing, fast evolving pandemic challenge) was started in April 2021. As a part of which 15 samples of each sentinel site are sent fortnightly for Whole-genome sequencing. He was apprised that Genome Testing Laboratory will soon be set up in PGIMS, Rohtak.

During the presentation it came to light that the COVID-19 fatality rate of Haryana is 1.23 per cent so far while the National Fatality rate is 1.6 per cent.

Chief Principal Secretary to Chief Minister, Sh. D.S. Dhesi, Chief Secretary, Sh. Vijai Vardhan, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister, Sh. V. Umashankar, Additional Chief Secretary to Government, and Financial Commissioner, Revenue & Disaster Management and Consolidation Department, Sh. Sanjeev Kaushal, Additional Chief Secretary, Medical Education and Research Department, Sh. Alok Nigam, Additional Principal Secretary to Chief Minister, Dr. Amit Kumar Agrawal, Managing Director, Haryana Medical Services Corporation, Sh. Saket Kumar, Director, Urban Local Bodies Department, Sh. Ashok Kumar Meena and Special Secretary, Medical Education & Research Department, Dr. Shaleen were present in the meeting.