City corpn to bring 50 docs to conduct fever clinics

Coimbatore: The health department has decided to bring in 50 doctors from multiple resources to intensify Coimbatore Corporation’s fever camps.
This is expected to help in collecting nasal swabs from patients with symptoms. The corporation and public health department has ordered for around 1,000 pulse oximeters each to distribute to families in home quarantine, so that they can monitor themselves. Anybody with a saturation rate of less than 95% will be made to give their nasal swab for Covid-19 test and be hospitalized.
The district administration on Monday held an official coordination meeting attended by the revenue divisional officer, city police commission, corporation commissioner, city health officer and deputy commissioner. “The idea is to use these new doctors in hotspots and containment zones to identify symptomatic patients as early as possible, so that they don’t come to the hospital in a state of critical illness,” a senior official said. “We want to ensure that no patient with lung changes or happy hypoxia don’t go untreated until it is too late,” the official said.
Deputy director of public health Dr G Ramesh Kumar said of the 50 doctors the civic body asked for, they are allotting five doctors from rural areas. “The government hospitals have agreed to depute 25 of their staff and the remaining 20 doctors will be outsourced,” he said.
The oximeters will be given to households of positive cases to monitor the oxygen level themselves. The oximeters will be taken back after the quarantine period. “We have already given the oximeters to five or six households in rural areas. We bought 1,046 oximeters,” Dr Ramesh Kumar said.