As a contingency plan, the district administration has decided to utilise the beds available in the hostels of educational institutions in different parts of the district to accommodate COVID-19 patients if the health authorities were to face shortage of beds in Government hospitals.
“The situation arising out of the spread of COVID-19 virus is under control in Tiruchi district. However, we cannot be complacent, and we need to be prepared to face the worst scenario. Hence, we have reached out to the educational institutions to use beds available for students in hostels,” S. Sivarasu, Collector, told The Hindu on Thursday.
He said that a survey on beds available in the hostels of both private and government institutions has been completed.
All arts, science and engineering colleges have also been taken into account. As per the preliminary report, 219 institutions had rooms for accommodating students.
There were 3,941 rooms attached to the hostels. While nearly 60% of them were in the city and its peripheries, about 40% were in municipal towns and town panchayats and their peripheries.
Mr. Sivarasu said that in the first category 60 institutions had 2,115 rooms with cots. In the second category, 1,826 rooms were available in 159 institutions. But, they had no cots. By providing basic facilities in the hostels, 11,145 patients could be accommodated. The ways and means to utilise the hostels were being discussed at various level.
He said that several managements had expressed their willingness to use their institutions for emergency situation.
The utilisation of hostels for treating COVID-19 patients would come into picture only when the Government Hospitals had no beds to accommodate them.
Prior to that, the Collector said that the infrastructure available in the private hospitals would be used to treat the patients. The private hospitals had already been informed to keep 20% of beds free for treating COVID-19 patients. If needed, steps would be taken to use more beds. At least 2,000 beds in private hospitals could be utilised. But, everything would depend upon the prevailing situation now and then.
Mr. Sivarasu said that almost all results of the swab tests of suspected COVID-19 patients in isolation wards at the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Government Hospital in Tiruchi were out. The focus was now on to get the swab specimens of family members and close contacts of 36 patients who tested positive for the virus. “If majority of them test negative, we can say that we are in a safe zone. We hope for the best,” Mr. Sivarasu added.
