“Wear your mask,” shouts the staff nurse as an attendant walks towards a ward on the eighth floor of Sassoon General Hospital. The nurse and a paediatric resident doctor are shielded by masks, goggles and gowns, and head and shoe covers, as they attend to a ten-month-old baby infected with Covid in the isolation room. It’s near lunch time, and 30 minutes to go for the doctor’s shift to end. “It is getting unbearably hot, more so in the PPE kit,” he says.
At the District Hospital in Aundh, a team of doctors show the specially set-up 100-bed field hospital with Covid isolation rooms and three liquid medical oxygen plants. “We are prepared to handle a spike in cases. Within the main hospital, too, 10 per cent of the 300 beds will be reserved for Covid isolation rooms,” Dr N S Yempalle, district civil surgeon tells Maharashtra Director of Health Dr Nitin Ambadekar.
At Sassoon hospital, there were 117 oxygen-supported beds and 30 ICU beds. (Express Photo by Pavan Khengre)
Ambadekar was accompanied on Monday by Deputy Director of Health (Pune circle) and the nodal officer for Pune district, Dr Radhakrishna Pawar, as they visited the two main state-run hospitals in the city for the two-day nationwide mock Covid drill that began Monday.
Ambadekar said that prior to the trial run, health teams across the district had conducted their own assessment, with more than 70 parameters listed for healthcare facilities, including bed capacity, testing kits, medicines, ambulance facilities, etc.
“Our teams are collating data across Pune, Solapur and Satara and it will be uploaded on the portal,” Pawar said. Currently, there are more than 4,587 active cases of Covid infection in Maharashtra with Pune at 747, Satara 104 and Solapur 86. Data on Covid preparedness has been sought from 298 hospitals in Pune district, 89 from Solapur and 77 from Satara.
Ambadekar was accompanied on Monday by Deputy Director of Health (Pune circle) and the nodal officer for Pune district, Dr Radhakrishna Pawar, as they visited the two main state-run hospitals in the city for the two-day nationwide mock Covid drill that began Monday. (Express Photo by Pavan Khengre)
At Sassoon hospital, there were 117 oxygen-supported beds and 30 ICU beds. The team that visited the hospital was informed that there were 1,370 nebulizer machines and 300 oximeter devices to check oxygen levels.
In the PMC area, Dr Suryakant Deokar, assistant medical officer, said there were 68 isolation beds (without oxygen support) across 10 civic-run hospitals and 1,441 isolation beds (without oxygen support) across 113 private hospitals. According to the civic health department, there are 2,763 trained doctors and 7,221 nurses.
