Karnataka plans not to allow home isolation in rural areas and slums in urban areas, but make arrangements to mandatorily treat patients in Covid Care Centres (CCC).

Speaking to reporters, on Saturday after the State Covid Task Force meeting, Deputy Chief Minister Dr C N Ashwathanarayan, said “In rural areas, CCCs will be established at PHC level and also make arrangements for isolation and treatment in places such as hostels.”

“Deputy Commissioners in the district will be entrusted with this responsibility,” he added.

BBMP to be relieved of Health Management

The task force took a decision to relieve and bifurcate the health management system in Bengaluru city, which is currently under BBMP (Bengaluru civic body) and entrust it with the Health and Family department, said Deputy Chief minister.

To make this a reality certain technical issues need to be studied. A committee will be constituted to look into this and will be asked to submit the study report in the next meeting of the task force. 100 bed secondary hospitals are to be set up in each assembly constituency in Bengaluru and one tertiary care hospital for every four constituencies.

Covid Task Force

The State Covid Task Force in its meeting took the following decisions:

District Hospitals: In every district hospital, 100 ICU beds shall be made available on a permanent basis. For this, required infrastructure and manpower need to be provided and all these should have oxygen generating units.

Covid medical waste disposal: For each bed ₹10 will be spent to facilitate timely disposal of waste in government hospitals. Medical kits are given to those infected and referred by private doctors.

Genome Labs: To study the changes in the genetics of viruses, a Genome Labs be set up in six places in the state. Out of these, four will be in medical colleges and two from the health department.

Drugs for 90 days: It was approved to procure medicines and other consumables required for the next 90 days in a phased manner with a spend of ₹260 crore. Procurement will be done through State Medical Supply Corporation by floating tenders.

Black Fungus: At present about 400 cases are estimated in the last one week and there is a shortage of the required drugs. The central government is being approached to provide 20,000 vials of the needed drug.

Oxygen Regulators: 1,000 oxygen utility regulatory devices developed by DRDO will be purchased. Out of this, 900 will be an automatic model which costs ₹10,000 each and 100 will be of manual mode which costs ₹6,000 each.

Oxygen bottling plants: Oxygen plants will be set up in nine districts that do not have the facility. Oxygen generators of 200-300 ltr/minute will be set up in community health centres. All the beds will be oxygenated in all taluk hospitals. To facilitate this, oxygen generators of capacity 500-600 ltr/minute will be set up.

Global tender for vaccines: This needs funding of ₹843 crore and the task force approved for this.

Remdesivir: Global tender to procure 5 lakh injections and ₹75 crore kept reserved for this purpose.

There are 207 community health centres of each 30 beds in the state. All the 30 beds in each of these centres will be converted into oxygenated beds. Out of these, 5 ICU beds and 5 HDU beds will be made available. In taluk hospital, 50 ICU beds will be made available (15 ventilators, out of this 6 is for paediatric). It was also decided to set up 100 ICU beds in district centres where medical colleges do not exist.

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