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With COVID cases on a rise, the Center today directed states to focus on strengthening their COVID control rooms in a bid to help patients who are suffering from the infectious disease.
In a letter to states, Additional Secretary of Union Health Ministry Arti Ahuja told the states to set up district, sub-district control rooms for COVID management to ensure ease in facilities like ambulance transportation, booking hospital beds etc.
The control rooms should be adequately staffed with doctors, counselors, volunteers and should be equipped with sufficient phone lines, it reads adding, “in order to ensure the control rooms have uninterrupted connectivity, they should be enabled with infrastructures like computers and broadband."
Depending on the caseload, the control rooms should be functional round the clock, it said and also pointed out that they should have real-time data of available testing centres, ambulances. They should also monitor availability of the beds.
India on Thursday saw the biggest single-day jump of 495 Omicron cases, taking the total number of infections of the new variant of coronavirus to 2,630, according to Union health ministry data.
Of the total cases, Maharashtra has the maximum at 797, followed by Delhi at 465, Rajasthan 236, Kerala 234, Karnataka 226, Gujarat 204 and Tamil Nadu 121.
Meanwhile, the country reported 90,928 fresh coronavirus infections, the highest in over 200 days, that pushed its caseload to 3,51,09,286, the data stated. As many as 91,702 new infections were reported on June 10 last year.
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