Guwahati has ample hospital beds for COVID patients: Minister

Assam health dept conducts door-to-door tests in city ward

By Special Correspondent Last updated Jul 7, 2020

Minister of state for Health and Family Welfare, Pijush Hazarika at Pandu.

GUWAHATI: The Assam health department on Tuesday allayed apprehensions about any shortage of hospital beds for COVID-19 patients in and around the city, disclosing that it would conduct maximum tests to ascertain more cases and eventually break the virus transmission chain.

Minister of state for health and family welfare, Pijush Hazarika informed that apart from Guwahati Medical College and Hospital where there are 2500 beds for COVID-19 patients, there are about 4500 more hospital beds in and around the city.

“Let me make it very clear that Guwahati does not have any shortage of beds for COVID- patients as was the apprehension in the wake of spike in positive cases here. Apart from GMCH, we have about 4500 more beds for coronavirus patients in the greater Guwahati area, right from Jagiroad to Mirza to Amingaon,” Hazarika told reporters here on Tuesday.

The minister said that the health department would conduct more and more tests in the coming days to detect possible COVID-19 positive cases in various parts of the city and treat them.

“We have ample beds for their treatment and we aim to contain further spread of the virus here,” he said.

Hazarika said that the critical cases were being treated at GMCH and MMC Hospital while asymptomatic cases were undergoing treatment at the COVID Care Centres.

“We will start operating another COVID Care Centre at Sarusajai either tomorrow or day after,” he said.

As it is, the state health department has from Tuesday started door-to-door rapid antigen detection (RAD) tests at Pandu (Ward 2), a densely populated locality of the city which has become a COVID-19 hotspot following detection of several cases recently.

The department aims to conduct 3000 RAD tests in the ward by Wednesday.

Kamrup Metro district, which is currently under lockdown, has registered 3,891 COVID-19 positive cases between June 24 and July 6. On Monday, the district reported 598 COVID-19 positive cases (out of 786 cases in the state).

More wards of the city are also likely to witness such RAD tests in the coming days.