Covid infrastructure to remain intact till November-end

BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha government has decided to retain manpower in Covid treatment facilities and keep the infrastructure intact as part of its readiness for the anticipated third wave of the pandemic.As decided, Covid infrastructure in terms of beds in the government owned and managed health facilities and additional healthcare workers engaged in such units will be retained till the end of November.

The Health and Family Welfare department has asked all collectors, municipal commissioners, directors of Capital Hospital, Rourkela Government Hospital, superintendents of all Medical Colleges and CDMOs to continue with the engagement up to November 30.“Even as cases are declining, personnel already engaged for surveillance, vaccination and testing will remain engaged till further notice. The next course of action will be decided in December keeping in view the prevailing situation,” said a health official.

On the other hand, with the Centre allocating 80.83 lakh Covid-19 vaccine doses to Odisha for November, the State government has decided to further ramp up its vaccination drive.The free consignment of vaccines includes 66.07 lakh doses of Covishield and 14.76 lakh of Covaxin. The State had received 22.48 lakh additional doses of vaccines last month. It was supplied 91.61 lakh doses of both vaccines in October against the promised allocation of 69.13 lakh doses of free supply. 

The State has so far administered single dose to around 81 per cent and double dose to 40 per cent of its targeted 3.25 crore population.Meanwhile, the new cases crossed 300-mark on Wednesday after remaining low for the last two days as 387 people, including 75 in the age group of 0-18 years were found positive for the virus.

Khurda reported the highest 195 cases, including 126 from Bhubaneswar, followed by 33 from Cuttack, 18 from Sambalpur, 12 from Puri and 10 each from Jajpur and Jagatsinghpur. Five districts did not report any new cases.With this, the tally rose to 10,44,428. Four more patients succumbed to the disease taking the death toll to 8,368. The State has 2664 active cases.