New Delhi: Home Minister Amit Shah and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh visited a newly-created temporary hospital with 1,000 beds, including 250 in the ICU, for COVID-19 patients here on Sunday, officials said.
The facility has been constructed in just 12 days near the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport on a piece of land belonging to the Ministry of Defence. “Visited the 1,000 bed Sardar Patel Covid Hospital, which has 250 ICU beds, along with @rajnathsingh ji. DRDO built it in record time of 12 days with assistance from MHA, MOHFW, Armed Forces and Tata Trust,” Shah said in a tweet.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, Minister of State for Home G Kishan Reddy and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also accompanied Shah and Singh. Shah said an Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMC) team will run the hospital while the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will maintain it. The home minister said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is fully committed to helping the people of Delhi in these challenging times and this COVID hospital, yet again, highlights that resolve.
He thanked the DRDO, Tatas and the armed forces medical personnel “who have risen to the occasion and helped tackle the emergency”. A home ministry statement said under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi, the home minister held a series of meetings since June 14 to review the COVID-19 management and ways to tackle it in Delhi-NCR.
On the directions of Shah a number of important decisions were taken that include reducing COVID-19 treatment rates to one third in Delhi’s private hospitals, providing 20,000 additional beds, increasing testing by using rapid antigen kits, re-demarcation of containment of zones, contact tracing of infected persons with the help of ‘Arogya Setu’ and ‘Ithas’ aaps and providing COVID-19 telemedicine to the patients by expert doctors of AIIMS, it said. (PTI)
