PUDUCHERRY: Puducherry has the highest number of COVID-19 cases per million in the country, said JIPMER Director Rakesh Aggarwal in a statement on Thursday. The current doubling time of cases is around 14 days, one of the fastest in the country, he added.
This has resulted in multifold increase in COVID patients admitted in hospitals. Even more importantly, the number of patients requiring intensive hospital care and high flow of oxygen has markedly increased. This has forced JIPMER to focus on caring for acutely sick patients.
JIPMER has expanded its bed strength for COVID from around 200 beds originally to 325 beds now, said the Director. The number of beds with centralized piped oxygen has been increased. The institute is trying to make additional beds including ICU beds available for COVID patients.
The increasing number of seriously ill patients and those on intensive support has meant an increase in the number of health care personnel needed to take care of them. Thus JIPMER has decided to suspend the physical elective OPD services temporarily from August 24, though emergency and tele consultation based outpatient consultation services will continue as usual, said the Director.
An additional challenge faced by the institute is the high proportion of asymptomatic COVID-19 patients among those seeking elective care for various chronic ailments. During April, May, June, July and August (till 18th), 243 such patients admitted in JIPMER have tested positive. The figure was one, eight, six, 85 and 143 in the respective months. This is resulting in exposure and infection of a large number of health care workers.
A total of 233 health care workers tested positive in the five months with 18, 78 and 123 in the last three months respectively. In addition, several health workers in close contact with them had to be quarantined.
Sounding the alarm, the Director said that if the situation continues to worsen at the current rate, there would be a distinct risk of massive disruption of services due to non-availability of health care personnel for various specialized services, in particular those of emergency nature that are not available in other hospitals in the region.
The closure of OPD services is also aimed at ensuring that health care personnel are available for specialized emergency services not available elsewhere, he said.