Covid drills at hospitals; case count remains low

Hospitals across the country held “drills” on Tuesday to assess capacities in case there is a sudden surge in Covid-19 cases, officials at the central and state levels said, days after the Union government raised readiness levels following an outbreak in neighbouring China.

There are, however, no signs of any spike in India based on case numbers, which have dropped consistently from a little under 300 in the week leading to December 1 to 173 in the seven days prior to December 26. Experts have pointed out that China’s situation is different since the country has opened up suddenly, letting the virus rip through a largely unimmune population as opposed to India where vaccination is high and which opened up months ago. They have, at the same time, said there needs to be vigilance for possible new variants in the future.

Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya and his state-level counterparts visited some of the largest hospitals across the country on Tuesday, taking stock of bed availability, stocks of medicines and equipment like ventilators, and reviewing human resources.

“Covid cases are rising in parts of the world and India might witness a spike in cases too. Hence, it is important that the entire Covid infrastructure in terms of equipment, processes and human resources are at a state of operational readiness,” the Union health minister said while visiting the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi.

People aware of the matter said the focus of the exercise was largely to derive a geographically representative availability of health facilities such as bed capacity, included isolation beds, oxygen-supported isolation beds, ICU beds and ventilator-supported beds. Also tested was the availability of human resources — doctors, nurses, paramedics, Ayush doctors and other frontline workers — and medical oxygen supplies, including that of oxygen concentrators, oxygen cylinders, PSA (pressure swing action) plants, liquid medical oxygen storage tanks, and medical gas pipeline system.

The drill involved having dummy patients and admissions to assess various processes.

“We have enough stock. The public need not panic,” said Tamil Nadu health minister Ma Subramanian, who oversaw a drill at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital. The state, he said, had sufficient medicines, beds, equipment, and oxygen.

In Uttar Pradesh, deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak visited a hospital in Lucknow. “I personally checked the Covid management (facilities), oxygen flow and ventilators at Lucknow’s Balrampur Hospital. Everything is working fine. A drill is being conducted for medical, paramedical and nursing staff on how to function in case of an emergency,” said Pathak, who is also the state’s health minister.

Delhi’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who holds the health portfolio, visited the state-run Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan (LNJP) Hospital and reviewed processes and preparations. People aware of the matter said the government will revive the availability of real-time data on the availability of beds, oxygen cylinders and ventilators on a Delhi government portal from Tuesday.

An officer associated with the drill in Bengal said three state-run hospitals in Kolkata — Infectious Diseases and BG Hospital, Sambhu Nath Pandit Hospital, and MR Bangur Hospital — have been identified where Covid-19 patients will be shifted in case of any surge. “At least one hospital has been identified in each district to tackle initially if there is any spike,” the official said, asking not to be named.

Since last week, the government has attempted to raise awareness and draw attention to the surge elsewhere. A review meeting was held by the Prime Minister on Thursday, when he urged people and administrations to be alert and not drop their guard.

Several meetings were held by Mandaviya as well.

On Tuesday, he held informal discussions with the heads of departments (HoDs) and staff of Safdarjung Hospital and spent around an hour with doctors, nurses, heads of security and sanitation services, and noted their feedback and suggestions.

The person quoted above added that the drill also included assessment of referral processes, availability of advanced and basic life support (ALS/BLS) ambulances, availability of other ambulances under public-private partnership or with NGOs, and whether ambulance call centres were functioning. Testing capacities, availability of RT-PCR and rapid antigen test kits, availability of testing equipment and reagents, and stocks of personal protection equipment (PPE) were also assessed.

Experts have also pointed out the need to focus on vaccination as part of being alert. On Friday, HT reported analysis from government data that showed the extent of the lacking booster dose uptake: around 719 million of 940 million adults are yet to take their third shots. The data showed that around 66% adults had their last shot 6 months ago, 53% over nine months ago, and 11% over a year ago — with all these people likely having suboptimal protection by now.

The government last week included a new vaccine, a nasal delivery dose known as iNCOVACC, adding to its arsenal of tools to fight the pandemic and hoping that the new dose helps rid the hesitancy.

India has had three Covid-19 peaks till now — the first in 2020, when 93,227 cases were recorded every day in the week leading up to September 17. The worst wave was in the following year, when the Delta variant struck, with 392,331 people infected on average in the seven days leading to May 8. The last peak was due to the Omicron variant this year, when there were 311,919 new cases recorded on average in the week ending January 25, though these were significantly milder than the previous variants.

As of Tuesday, India has recorded fewer than 500 cases a day on average for four weeks now.

“The mock drill is important to know how well our system is functioning on ground. How ready we are,” said Dr Ashok Seth, chairman, Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, in Delhi.