PUDUCHERRY: JIPMER which is focused on caring for acutely sick COVID patients has increased the number of beds available to 400, Director of the institute Dr. Rakesh Agarwal said on Tuesday.
The JIPMER director said that the number of beds with centralized piped oxygen has also been increased along with ICU beds and added that efforts are on in a war footing to tackle the shortage caused by increasing COVID cases.
The number of ICU beds have been increased from 35 to 61 and the process of redesignating an additional 75 beds for COVID-related emergencies is underway, he said.
However their efforts are being outmatched by the rising number of COVID patients in the Union Territory in the last four to five weeks.
Even the number of patients requiring intensive hospital care and high-flow oxygen has reportedly increased.
This means there is also a rising demand for healthcare personnel to take care of them.
"Doctors from various specialities are being redeployed to COVID services while the beds and wards in other buildings like the Superspeciality Block Women and Child Health, Emergency Services and the Institute Block, are being modified for the same. Emergency and essential non-Covid services are maintained as best as is possible," he said.
But the rapid rise in sick patients needing critical care for Covid has meant that the additional facilities at JIPMER get saturated as soon as these are created. Thus the other healthcare institutions in the region, irrespective of their size, will have to urgently create and redesignate their beds for Covid-related services to manage the rapidly-evolving situation.
The institute is regularly reviewing the situation and is trying to scale the facilities for Covid-19 patients as fast as possible.
The Director urged the public to cooperate and fight the pandemic by following measures to protect themselves from the infection.
He also warned that the elderly and those with comorbidities are at a higher risk of falling severly ill and that such persons must be cautious.