RANCHI: With the number of active Covid-19 cases nearing the 5,000 in Ranchi district, which is facing an acute crisis of dedicated hospital beds to treat infected patients, the district administration is planning to construct a 200-bedded makeshift hospital at the football stadium of Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (Rims).
The number of active cases in Ranchi reached an all-time high of 4,721 on Thursday night, going past the 4,425 patients the city had on September 4 in the peak of the first wave of the pandemic. The number had fallen to a low of 198 on February 5. On Friday, the active caseload in Ranchi breached the 5,000-mark and settled at 5,217.
Even the seven-day rolling average of daily new cases touched 600, going past the 500-mark for the first time since the outbreak started in the state on March 31 last year. The figure was in the 20s throughout February, falling to a low of 21 in the middle of the month.
In the first eight days of the month, the state has already added 4,913 fresh cases of the virus and clocked 31 deaths. If the trend continues, April might be the worst month for Jharkhand since the inception of the pandemic here on March 31 last year. Till now, September 2020 was the worst month in terms of fresh cases with 11,294 cases and October 2020 saw the maximum number of deaths at 59.
Ranchi deputy commissioner Chhavi Ranjan, who paid a visit to the Khelgaon isolation centre, said, “We are working to convert a part of Khelgaon into a Covid Care Centre and will soon add at least 50 oxygen beds. Adequate number of healthcare workers will be deployed in the next couple of days. We have once again acquired Paras Hospital in Dhurwa area which will be working as a full time CCC and are also in the process of getting Mecon Hospital on board.”
Ranjan further said Mecon has a capacity of 60 beds and Paras will earmark 50 beds for Covid patients which will further boost the capacity, which is currently around 1,200 beds.
Meanwhile, in order to clear the backlog of samples collected for Covid-19 tests, for which the district health authority was pulled up by the high court, it was decided to send samples to private labs and at the same time, ramp up collection. An MoU has been signed with a private testing lab in this regard, officials said.
Incident commanders have been asked to carry out surveys to check the status of beds at private hospitals. This comes after state health minister Banna Gupta asked private hospitals to reserve 25% of the total number of beds for Covid-19 patients.
“I have directed all incident commanders to calculate the total bed capacity of each hospital and check whether 25% of that has been reserved for Covid patients. The hospitals are also being told that they have to update the bed availability online as well as on a spreadsheet provided by the administration so that we can monitor the situation,” said Ranchi SDO Sameera S.