Covid wards return in Patna hospitals

PATNA: Amid spurt in new Covid cases due to the latest JN.1 variant and a subsequent alert issued by the state, government hospitals in the district have started gearing up with separate beds and necessary medicines to be pandemic-ready once again.

Patna civil surgeon (CS) Dr Shrawan Kumar on Wednesday ordered all six sub-divisional hospitals, four community health centres and 23 primary health centres to increase testing of all symptomatic patients using the rapid antigen test (RAT) method.

The positive samples will be sent to the microbiology lab of Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) for variant confirmation.

The CS said virus transport medium (VTM) were available for around 6,600 samples, while a requisition would be sent to Bihar Medical Services and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited soon for further supply. This medium is used for safe transportation of the virus samples to the testing lab.

The largest government hospital of the state, Patna Medical College Hospital (PMCH), has identified a 30-bed ward for Covid patients. It has sufficient medical oxygen availability for supply to patients through pipelines, said Dr AK Jha, deputy superintendent.

"The PMCH has asked all its doctors and employees to take primary precautionary measures and use hand sanitiser as they deal with patients with different diseases," Jha said.

The IGIMS administration has identified 10 beds with oxygen facility and three in intensive care unit at present. Medical superintendent Dr Manish Mandal said if the situation demanded, the number of beds could be increased at a short notice. Besides direction was issued for following the Covid protocols.

All India Institute of Medical Sciences-Patna (AIIMS-P) Covid nodal officer Dr Sanjeev Kumar said 20 beds with respiratory support system were ready while more could be arranged. "No details of the JN.1 variant is available with us now but it is supposed to have high transmissibility," said Dr Sanjeev, adding AIIMS-P had played an exemplary role in fighting the three Covid waves.

Among others, Nalanda Medical College and Hospital (NMCH) has convened a meeting of all its heads of departments to chalk out a strategy for fighting the new variant.