The State government on Thursday informed the Madras High Court of its decision to shift the Remdesivir sales counters from the Kilpauk Medical College to the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium at Periamet to manage the crowd better. The court was also told that more counters would be opened at the stadium so that the attenders of patients at private hospitals need not wait in queues for long.
Advocate-General R. Shunmugasundaram made the submission before the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy at the hearing of a suo motu PIL petition taken up by the court to monitor the fight against COVID-19.
After having a word with Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan, the Advocate-General said the counters would be shifted to the stadium as early as possible.
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During the course of the hearing, advocate Naveen Kumar Murthi brought to the notice of the court that patients were dying in ambulances that queued up outside government hospitals while waiting for their turn to get admitted. He claimed that nine patients had died in ambulances because they could not get admitted in time, and urged the court to issue appropriate directions.
Observing that they, too, had seen photographs of ambulances queuing up outside hospitals in newspapers, the judges, in their interim order, wrote: “Learned Advocate-General has assured the court that steps are being taken to ensure that there is no such queuing up and that ambulances are not held as additional hospital units. For such purpose, additional stretchers may be procured by government hospitals to house patients in corridors and other places.”
The court went on to state: “This is a war-like situation where treatment has to be afforded to all who need the same. By and large, things appear to be under control and nothing untoward has, thankfully, been reported on account of lack of oxygen or the like. However, to ensure that there is prevention of a large number of cases in future, immediate steps need to be taken to accelerate the rate of vaccination and create awareness of the need for inoculation.”
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Taking note of some hospitals in Tamil Nadu as well as in Puducherry lying in disuse, the court ordered that every endeavour must be made to convert these establishments into makeshift hospitals to treat COVID-19 patients.