VIJAYAWADA: Special Chief Secretary (health) KS Jawahar Reddy has asked district collectors to shift patients suffering from ailments unrelated to the pandemic from Covid hospitals to other institutes as the number of coronavirus cases in the state is “expected to go up in the next two-three weeks”. “District Covid Line-2 hospitals are to be lined up immediately... all district collectors are requested to adopt the following Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) to shift/divert patients from Covid hospitals (SCH, DCH-1 or DCH-2) to other hospitals,” Jawahar Reddy said in an order issued on Friday.
As per the SOP, patients must be categorised, wherever possible, as maternity (OBG), cardiac, oncology, pulmonology, trauma, nephrology and other cases, before being shifted. “All existing and expected maternity cases are to be moved to a government maternity hospital in the same or nearby town. If there is no such government facility, shift/divert them to any specialised maternity trust/missionary hospitals (not for profit), if it has Aarogyasri facility.
If there is no such facility, admit them in any hospital in the Aarogyasri network,” the health secretary said. Similarly, depending on their need, patients would be moved to government institutes such as a chest hospital or cancer hospital. lf there is no such provision or institution available, they are to be referred to Aarogyasri network hospitals on the basis of their speciality. “While doing so, care should be taken to assess the availability of doctors, ICU beds and other paraphernalia to attend to emergencies,” the order stated.
All people with virus symptoms to be tested
The state has decided to test all people who show symptoms of Covid-19. Suspected cases will include symptomatic contacts of infectees, people with influenza-like illnesses (ILIs), and people with severe acute respiratory illnesses (SARIs). The Truenat method will be used to test these people, and if the result returns positive, they will be treated as presumptive Covid-19 cases before being tested again through the RT PCR method