The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi and its counterparts in other areas of the country are to be positioned on the front line in the fight against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
The premier facility has been requested by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to dedicate a portion of the emergency wing of its Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Centre to function as isolation wards for COVID-19 patients. The wards will be capable of admitting twenty suspected coronavirus patients at a time.
If tests for coronavirus yield a positive result, the patients in question will be transferred to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Jhajjar, Haryana for treatment. “We plan to create 125 beds for COVID-19 patients in NCI,” report sources quoted by The Times of India. “Of this, 25 will be ICU [intensive care unit] beds and the rest will have advanced facilities for monitoring and acute management of COVID-19 cases.” The Ministry has asked that the number of isolation beds at NCI be increased to 215 from the current 25.
In addition to NCI and AIIMS Delhi, isolation bed facilities have been asked for at the AIIMS facilities in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh; Odisha state capital Bhubaneswar; Jodhpur, Rajasthan; Bihar state capital Patna; Chhattisgarh state capital Raipur; and Rishikesh, Uttarakhand. These facilities have been asked to create between twelve and fifteen such beds, which can be upped to thirty should the need arise. As well as the AIIMS and NCI, the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research in Puducherry has been asked to create facilities for the isolation of suspected coronavirus patients.
COVID-19 has sparked global panic as it spreads to every continent sans Antarctica. The virus’s outbreak originated in Wuhan, the capital city of China’s Hubei province, and has since spread to a plethora of countries including India. At the time of writing, 111,758 confirmed COVID-19 cases have been reported worldwide. 3,888 people have lost their lives as a result of the infection. There are presently 45,148 active cases of the coronavirus. India has reported 43 cases of COVID-19 till date. Three of the confirmed coronavirus patients – students in Kerala – have recovered.
