NEW DELHI: The Centre on Thursday asked the states to ensure that hospital infrastructure is kept ready for any possible surge in Covid as well as to prepare a sufficient stock of critical drugs.
The expenditure under the emergency response and health system preparedness package is being centrally monitored, it said, nudging the states to release matching grants promptly.
At a meeting with state authorities, Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that it needs to be ensured that all health facilities at the field level have functional ventilators, PSA plants, oxygen concentrators.
The ministry pointed out that many ventilators supplied by the Centre were still lying unpacked and unused at some field hospitals, with consumables not being procured and made available by the states.
“This needs to be reviewed immediately to ensure that all PSA oxygen plants, oxygen concentrators and ventilators are installed and functioning,” said the secretary.
Bhushan also urged the states to ensure to maintain adequate buffer stock for the eight critical drugs identified in clinical treatment of Covid, the guidelines for which were shared in July.
The government also alerted nearly 50 districts reporting higher case positivity to monitor the case trajectory on a regular basis, and to promptly dispatch positive samples to the mapped INSACOG labs for whole genome sequencing.
The ministry has emphasized on the close monitoring of new emerging hotspots or clusters, breakthrough and re-infection cases, and prompt investigation of such events by the rapid response teams.