Karnataka Department of Health and Family Welfare is formulating protocols for bigger outbreak of Covid-19, if needed. The decision to ready such protocols was taken at a meeting of senior officers for the allocation of human resources.

On Sunday, seven new cases have been confirmed in the State taking the total number of infected to 151 which included four deaths and 12 persons discharged.

Out of 135 cases, 132 (including one pregnant woman) are in isolation at designated hospitals and are stable and three in ICU.

The protocol formulation meeting was chaired by PC Jaffer, Secretary Finance Department - Expenditure and Nodal officer, capacity building under the guidance of Pankaj Kumar Pandey, Commissioner, Department of Health and Family Welfare.

During the meeting, the officials outlined the roles and responsibilities of personnel required for the smooth and uninterrupted functioning of health facilities ranging from fever clinics to intensive care units at Covid hospitals.

The team also mapped a detailed set of activities to ensure the continuum of care for patients, from reception at the health facilities, to different stages of testing and referral to tertiary facilities.

Preparing for any eventuality

“Even as the government has been fairly successful in containing the unprecedented spread of Covid-19 in the State, we are not taking things lightly, and as such are preparing for any kind of eventuality so that the people of the State are not put into any kind of inconvenience. We have visualised hospital conditions under different stages of a pandemic and have broken down essential activities, including non-clinical activities such as crowd management, food management, mobility and data entry into different buckets,” said Pandey.

He further said “This allows us to assign specific roles to medical and non-medical staff for better efficiency. The Government is also planning to enlist volunteers to support facility functions in the event of a large number of cases, and develop training modules to enable them to carry out these functions. The protocols also make provisions for tying up with community management teams to handle follow-ups.”

The Department is in the process of identifying various roles that can be entrusted to the volunteers with minimum training or intense specialised trainings. This is expected to bring about clarity in their roles without any overlap in a real-world hospital scenario. “The protocols, once finalised, will be forwarded to the districts, allowing the heads of the institutions the flexibility to allot human resources according to their requirements and case load,” said Pandey.

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