110 more Covid beds at PGI

Naina Mishra

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 17

Following directions of the UT Administrator, the PGI has decided to create 80 more beds at Nehru Extension Hospital, a dedicated Covid facility at the institute, and 30 beds at the Advanced Paediatric Centre for young Covid patients.

However, the problem of insufficient skilled manpower is a big challenge before the institute and training will be imparted to health care workers (HCWs) before assigning Covid duties.

A group of senior doctors from the PGI had recently published a paper highlighting “lack of trained manpower to work in an infectious disease facility.”

According to the paper, the staff deployed for outpatient services, elective admissions and surgeries at the PGI were allocated to the new Covid facility. However, the new staff posed a challenge as the HCWs were inexperienced as there were different protocols for a respiratory isolation unit.

To overcome the problem, the PGI trained HCWs on an urgent basis and several teams were created to impart training on ICU protocols, infection-control practices, including donning and doffing of PPE kits and the movement of staff, patients and material inside the new facility.

Meanwhile, the PGI Director, Prof Jagat Ram, said, “We have created 80 more beds at the NHE, which is already a dedicated Covid facility, and 30 more beds at the Advanced Paediatric Centre. The beds at the paediatric centre will be used for young Covid patients. We have received 10 more ventilators from the Central Government.”

He added, “The beds will be made operational in phases as we will also be training our manpower before assigning them Covid duties.”

The NHE is a 200-bed hospital, which is separate from the main hospital. As many as 141 patients are admitted to the Covid ward, of whom 49 belong to Chandigarh, 53 to Punjab, 15 to Haryana, 11 to Himachal Pradesh and the remaining to other states.