With the Indira Gandhi Government Medical College and Research Institute (IGGMC&RI), the lone corona care centre directly under the control of territorial administration, slowly running out of bed capacity, the focus has now shifted towards establishing additional beds in private medical colleges and venues outside the health care sector.
Of the total bed capacity of 500 at IGGMC&RI, the hospital has already 474 active COVID-19 cases undergoing treatment.
The other dedicated Centrally-run Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (Jipmer) COVID-19 centre has around 300 beds of which 150 are already occupied, said a senior Health Department official.
According to the official, there is also a plan to convert the Rajiv Gandhi Women and Child Hospital as another COVID- 19 centre.
But converting the hospital for treating virus infected patients could turn out to be another health crisis as the Institute caters to around 250 out patients, performs 30 to 40 surgeries, a similar number of emergency cases and attends to 100 to 150 casualty cases, both maternity and paediatric, per day.
The government has to find alternative health care facility for maternity and paediatric cases, the official.
“Now we are getting on an average 120 to 130 cases per day. It’s likely to go up in the coming days. Our own estimate is that by the end of next month we will have around 4500 to 6000 cases,” said a senior doctor.
The other alternative would be to add more beds in the six private medical colleges. As on Wednesday, already 213 patients were admitted at these hospitals, maximum being at the Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences.
Initially, the government had requested the private medical colleges to part with 100 beds each but after seeing the spike in cases the colleges have been asked to set aside 200 to 300 beds.
“The biggest challenge will be to fix the rates in private colleges. We have made certain calculations by fixing the rates for ordinary beds, oxygen beds, ICUs and tests,” said an official.
The Health Department has worked on the rates based on the treatment charges fixed by Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
Stating that it was to early to disclose the rates fixed by the Department as the government would take a final call after engaging the management of private institutions, the official said arriving at an affordable rate for treatment at private medical colleges would be a challenge.
He said the department was clear that a maximum a college could charge for testing should be around ₹2,400.
“The government is also considering incurring a part of the cost of the treatment at private colleges to reduce the burden of people, especially for economically underprivileged. A clear decision on treatment cost and other issues will be decided in two to three days,” said an official.
The district administration is also in talks with youth hostels, guest houses and hotels to create additional bed facilities in case need arises. Already, the government-run guest house at Uppalam has been taken over for frontline health workers to stay as part of mandatory quarantine after work hours.
