Hyderabad: Private hospitals to have special wings for foreign returnees

HYDERABAD: Amid growing worries over the Omicron variant of Covid-19, health authorities have urged private hospitals to have separate outpatient wings and inpatient treatment facility for foreigners and those who have travelled abroad recently.
Officials have ordered that RT-PCR tests for Covid-19 be done in all the private hospitals and that the state health department be notified if any of these patients develop symptoms.
According to the authorities, the rule applies to both risk and non-risk countries. The same system that was in place during the second wave will be in place again, they said. Separate outpatient and inpatient services will have to be in place for foreigners in both government and private hospitals.
“Anyone approaching hospitals with any kind of illness should be subject to the same rules,” the officials said. “We do not want the hospitals to become hotspots again like in the second wave,” an official said.
There are only a few dozen hospitals that provide medical tourism services and a majority of foreign patients visit these hospitals only. The authorities have directed that if positive results are found, the samples should be sent for genome sequencing.
All the hospitals were also asked to keep detailed records of foreign patients who come for treatment.
Meanwhile, the test results of those whose samples were taken from Paramount Colony and Tolichowki area are kept under wraps as officials are refusing to reveal the results. Health staff have collected more than 1,000 samples from these areas.
While officials say there are no plans to impose any restrictions anytime soon in the state, the government is taking inputs from various departments and stakeholders in the wake of Omicron cases in the state.
Officials are concerned that Omicron is likely to speard faster than other variants. They say that if restrictions on large gatherings are imposed, they will only apply to the city because majority of cases appear to be from Hyderabad and that the majority of Omicron positive patients are in Hyderabad.