BHUBANESWAR: In view of the steep rise in Covid-19 cases in the Capital, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to increase bed strength of the existing dedicated Covid hospital (DCH) and restart another DCH along with two Covid care centres (CCCs) from this week.
The civic body has urged the State government to run the SUM DCH in its full strength and Aditya Ashwini DCH at 50 per cent of its capacity from this week onwards. While SUM has around 500 beds, the DCH is now running with 300 beds which include 125 ICU beds, 70 ventilators and 25 HDU beds. However, most of the beds have been filled after cases started increasing in the city this month. Similarly, the Aditya Ashwini having 150 beds has not been made operational this year.
“We are expecting that the DCH will be ready by Tuesday. Apart from these two hospitals, the civic body will keep the CCCs at Patia and Dumduma with a bed strength of 60 and 45 respectively, ready for asymptomatic patients,” said an official.
The city has witnessed around 200 per cent rise in its daily cases since beginning of April. As many as 148 cases were reported in the city in the last 24 hours against 52 cases on April 1. With 16 infections, Khandagiri continued to report maximum number of cases. Besides, 10 cases were detected from Pokhariput area.