4,000 tests: Why Noida, Ghaziabad need to ramp up health infra

NOIDA/GHAZIABAD: The Noida and Ghaziabad administrations are gearing up to conduct 4,000 Covid tests daily under a special drive between July 2 and 12, but that also calls for a major boost to health infrastructure.
With both districts reporting a high positivity rate in cases, the requirement for beds, doctors, healthcare professionals, ambulances and other infrastructure needs to go up significantly to cater to the enhanced testing drive.

Officials in Noida said they were preparing for around 4,000 cases over the next 10 days, considering a positivity rate of 10%. Currently, Noida has conducted about 22,000 tests and reported 2,304 cases till Tuesday. This translates into an average positivity rate of 10-15%, which is expected to go up to 20-25% if people with ILI symptoms are tested.
As of now, Noida has five Covid hospitals with 900 beds, of which 60 have ventilator support. Oxygen is available in all these hospitals. “We have about 3,000 beds across eight institutions in reserve. We have requested Sharda to increase its capacity from 400 to 600 beds and GIMS, too. We have about 60 ventilator beds and the capacity can be increased to 100, which is sufficient according to our estimates,” said Suhas LY, the Noida district magistrate.
However, availability of trained doctors and paramedical staff in the Covid health centres remains a challenge for the authorities. Noida currently has 72 doctors on Covid duty, but there is a requirement for 168 more. Also, 80 pharmacists, 240 ward boys and 360 sanitation staffers are required to manage the projected cases. As of now, no staff is available in these positions.
The district administration is now scrambling to hire doctors directly — as suggested by the National Health Mission — and get paramedical staff through empanelled agencies. “We are also getting support from the Indian Medical Association They have promised doctors from about 20 hospitals. We are hiring other staff, too, and the requirement will be met soon,” the DM said.
In Ghaziabad, too, the authorities are faced with a huge crunch of doctors and paramedical staff. At present, the district has four Covid hospitals with 826 beds and 10 ventilators in two health facilities — District Combined Hospital and Santosh Hospital.
Here, too, shortage of medical staff is a cause for concern. Although the health department has prepared a list of 13 Covid care hospitals with 4,500 beds in total, the current strength of staff can manage only 700 beds.
The Ghaziabad administration has also estimated that 40 teams with 240 doctors, 360 nurses, 80 pharmacists, 80 lab technicians, 240 ward boys and 360 sanitation workers would be needed if tests are scaled up. At present, Ghaziabad has the strength to form only seven such teams.
Chief medical officer Dr NK Gupta said the health department was in talks with the administration and other stakeholders to ramp up facilities. “We have also sought help from private doctors. We are hopeful of readying all the arrangements in time, he added.
District magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey could not be reached for a comment.
While t he districts plan to scale up testing, government labs currently do not have the capacity to test so many samples. GIMS and Child PGI in Noida test about 120 samples each daily while NIB tests 500 samples from across 5-6 districts of UP.