A number of senior doctors have written to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao suggesting a 20-point action plan to improve the State government’s COVID-19 management policy-making and implementation.
The signatories to the letter urged the Chief Minister to ensure that there was no manufacture, sale and use of poor-quality masks. The government should provide good quality masks to people in the lower socio-economic strata, and ensure mask compliance as “this seems to be one of the most effective preventative measure for this pandemic”.
The government should issue an ordinance and take control of all oxygen plants and channelise the distribution of the gas through a single window system. It also called for creating community oxygen centres for easy access of mild to moderately ill patients. “This will reduce burden on the hospitals. The oxygen production and supply should be regulated by the government immediately,” it said.
Among other suggestions made to the Chief Minister were the need for government intervention to make available emergency medications such as Remdesivir in a fair and a quick way to hospitals to avoid price gouging by various players.
The signatories also urged Mr Rao to consider using a hospital preparedness check-list and the COVID-19 surge spreadsheet to estimate and respond to the surge in demand for hospital-based services apart from creating plans to reduce staffing shortages and assess the need for alternative care sites such as emergency field hospitals.
