SHILLONG, Dec 27: The Shillong Civil Hospital and NEIGRIHMS on Tuesday conducted mock drills to assess their Covid-19 preparedness.
The drills focussed on parameters – availability of healthcare facilities, capacity of isolation beds, oxygen-supported beds, ICU (intensive care unit) beds and ventilator-supported beds.
The Shillong Civil Hospital showed its preparedness to deal with any eventuality. By way of acts, the staff of the hospital demonstrated procedures and protocols needed to be followed, right from the time a patient is brought to the hospital.
Joint DHS (Surgeon Superintendent), Shillong Civil Hospital, Dr Andreas Dkhar told reporters the hospital is geared up to manage Covid-19 cases. He said the hospital currently has 20 beds with oxygen to tackle new cases.
Stating that there is no Covid-19 positive case in the hospital now, Dr Dkhar said if there is a spike in the cases, then the hospital will close some wards and convert them into Covid-19 wards.
He said the hospital can increase the number of beds for Covid patients to 100 if the cases go up. If there is a need, the hospital will convert the new building below the female medical ward and the entire private ward into Covid-19 wards, he said.
“We have kept in reserve two deluxe rooms in case of any emergency involving VIPs,” Dr Dkhar said.
He said they will need to activate the Step Down Hospital at Umsawli. He disclosed that the oxygen plant at the hospital is functioning and it has the capacity to supply oxygen to all the wards.
Dr Dkhar said they will ask the government to provide the hospital with additional manpower if the situation demands.
“Currently, we have additional manpower of four contractual doctors and around 19 contractual nurses,” he said.
Meanwhile, NEIGRIHMS Director Prof Nalin Mehta said that as part of the mock drill, they had formed a team consisting of doctors, nursing staff, technicians, attendants, drivers and security personnel.
Informing that they had assimilated two scenarios, Dr Mehta said the first scenario was on how to handle a case if a person comes to the OPD and his Covid test result comes out positive. The second scenario was how to handle a complicated case that is transferred from any other place in Shillong or Meghalaya to NEIGRIHMS.
He further said that they had also practiced how investigation will be carried out in such cases like CT scan, X-Ray, ultrasound or even RT-PCR. The NEIGRIHMS Director also said that the team practiced how to cordon off the area to ensure people do not enter that zone.
“We also checked our stock of liquid oxygen and oxygen cylinders. We also looked at the stock of medicines, stock for RT-PCR and CBNAAT test kits to ensure the hospital is better prepared in case there are any challenges in future,” Dr Mehta said.
The team also checked the equipment which are currently not in use like pulse oximeters, nebulizers and cardiac monitors so as to ensure that the equipment are working in case there is an emergency.
Although the positivity rate is minimal in Meghalaya at just 0.1% or 0.2%, the state government has appealed to people to start wearing masks as a precautionary step.
With cases being detected among foreign returnees, the Centre has stepped up the monitoring measures. As part of that, mock drills were held across states and Union Territories on Tuesday to ensure their readiness to deal with any eventuality.
