The intense pace of disease transmission in the State and the burgeoning number of patients in the active case pool has necessitated a streamlining of hospital admissions in the State, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said.
Speaking to the media here on Wednesday, he said the expert committee advising the government on COVID-19 would prepare detailed guidelines on hospital admission. People who have been getting infected after receiving at least one dose of the vaccine have been found to be generally safe and hence need not get admitted in hospitals.
Also, people whose oxygenation status is satisfactory also can stay home, if they did not have any other illnesses and follow the directions given by doctors, Mr. Vijayan said.
He pointed out that the current surge capacity of the health system seemed to be satisfactory at present but going by the case graph, this was certainly not going to be enough in another two weeks.
While increasing the capacity and infrastructure in hospitals, shortage of human resources was a major problem that seemed to have few solutions, he said.
Bed occupancy status
The State is taking all possible measures to ensure that people will not have to go hospital hunting in the eleventh hour.
As the number of patients are rising exponentially, the government has decided to devise a system wherein at the district-level, every hospital, public and private, will update its bed occupancy, ICU occupancy and oxygen position every four hours on a web portal, so that patient referrals can be suitably made.
This will help the district authorities keep track of the utilisation and availability of hospital resources. This data will be made available soon on the public domain. People can contact the State Health helpline 1056 for advice on whom to contact for assistance.
In every district, District Programme Management Support Unit will have call centres to provide information and assistance to people. The numbers of the district helplines would be made available to people.
Chief Minister also advised that every citizen on home quarantine to be in close contact with the local health workers, councillors or ward members and to keep their contact numbers and to get in touch with them if at all any symptoms aggravate, for fast removal to hospitals.
The Health Department was trying to improve the infrastructure and facilities in CFLTCs/CSLTCs so that people without adequate facilities for home isolation can be cared for properly at these institutions.
Mr. Vijayan pointed out that the test positivity rate was rising alarmingly in many panchayats in Thrissur and Kottayam districts. Some 21 panchayats in Thrissur had a TPR of over 50%. In Kottayam, 58 out of the 71 panchayats had a TPR of over 20% and another five had a TPR between 40-50%. Lock-down-like regulations would have to be imposed in all these places for bringing down disease transmission.
