The city will soon get another exclusive COVID-19 facility, which will be housed in a newly constructed building for the National Institute of Ageing, on the premises of the King Institute of Preventive Medicine, Guindy.

The facility will have 500 beds, of which 200 will have oxygen lines, according to Health Minister C. Vijayabaskar. Inspecting facilities being readied to tackle the surge of COVID-19 patients in the city on Tuesday, the Minister said that work was being expedited to commission a 300-bed facility at the old hospital of the Chennai Port Trust. Besides, 300 beds were being readied on the old campus of the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology, Egmore.

“The National Institute of Ageing is being readied on the same lines as the Government Medical College Hospital, Omandurar Estate. There will be individual rooms, a common ward with partitions, an ICU facility, and ventilators. The work to scale up beds has been going on for the last two months,” he said.

The new facility would serve as a standby exclusive hospital for COVID-19 treatment. “We, along with the high-level committee, are discussing if this facility could be utilised for the geriatric population and those with co-morbidities,” the Minister said. Already, 81 specialists had been allocated for the facility. Next, doctors would be appointed. Multi-purpose workers would also be provided in the next couple of days, he said.

Beds had been scaled up at the city’s four government medical college hospitals and ESI Hospital, Ayanavaram, as well as COVID-19 Care Centres.

“We are scaling up the medical services keeping in mind the forthcoming 30 or 60 days,” Dr. Vijayabaskar added.

He said the bed capacity of government hospitals in Chennai stood at 4,900, while there were 75,000 beds across the State. COVID-19 Care Centres in the city had 17,500 beds.

Private hospitals and private medical college hospitals had assured the government of increasing their bed capacity. On Tuesday, 88 private hospitals/medical college hospitals had uploaded details on the portal stopcorona.tn.gov.in.

PG doctors appointed

Service and non-service postgraduate doctors, who had completed their course in May, had been posted on COVID-19 duty at government hospitals, COVID-19 Care Centres and COVID-19 Health Centres in Chennai.

An official of the Health department said 1,002 service PGs and 570 non-service PGs from across the State were posted on COVID-19 duty. “All of them will be joining duty from today. We are posting additional manpower to all these facilities to ensure that there is no shortage of doctors,” he said.

While service PGs would get government salary, non-service PGs would be paid ₹75,000, he said. “This is part of the bond period. As of now, they will be on COVID-19 duty for three months, and an extension depends on the situation.” Their boarding and lodging in hotels and transportation had been arranged.

The department had earlier decided to appoint 665 medical officers, 365 lab technicians and 1,230 multipurpose workers on an outsourcing basis for three months. Many of them did not take up the jobs due to low pay. The department has now increased the consolidated pay from ₹40,000 to ₹60,000 for medical officers, ₹10,000 to ₹15,000 for lab technicians and ₹6,000 to ₹12,000 for multipurpose workers.

“We wholeheartedly welcome these people to the service. Some of them have managed to come despite severe hurdles, and we appreciate it. They will truly augment our workforce here,” Health Secretary Beela Rajesh said.