SHILLONG, June 1: The Opposition Congress has termed the daily COVID-19 death count alarming.
“The fatality rate is more than 2 per cent in the state. Anything beyond 1 per cent is a matter of concern. The high death count clearly suggests there are deficiencies. We need to address these deficiencies to avoid the loss of precious lives,” Leader of Opposition, Mukul Sangma, told reporters after visiting the Civil Hospital and corona care centres in and around Jowai on Tuesday.
According to him, there is a need for trained manpower for taking care of critical patients who need to be put under ventilators.
He said that manpower auditing has not been done properly and many ventilators are not being put to use as a result.
“This is precisely what we are seeing in other districts. We do not have enough manpower. We need to send our doctors for training since we do not have enough anaesthetists who are needed to operate the ventilators and take care of patients required to be put under ventilator support,” Sangma said.
He underscored the need to ramp up the capabilities and advised the government to provide the necessary support to the Health department.
“The support being provided is completely inadequate. It gives us a reason to believe that the overall preparedness is completely missing. Unfortunately, that has resulted in a painful experience with a huge loss of precious lives,” he said.
The former chief minister also said it is important to look at what infrastructure is available before adding any new ones.
“We need to ramp up the existing infrastructure and optimally utilise the existing ones,” he added.
The ramping up is needed across the districts, he pointed out.
Sangma rued the government’s sluggish response to the observations made by the Opposition members.
“We visited the dedicated COVID-19 hospital in Jowai where the measures to ensure availability of oxygen beds are in progress. Only one of the two designated corona care centres have been made operational in Jowai,” he added.
