Shillong, July 5: With the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the state hard, a wary Health department is now setting its house in order and making all necessary preparation to face an anticipated third wave of the virus.
“We are better prepared for the third wave. It is for this reason that testing has not been brought down and containment measures have been kept in place. There is no room for complacency,” Principal Secretary, Health, Sampath Kumar said on Monday.
He said the department had send samples for testing to find out if there was any case of infection from the Delta plus variant in the state.
“We are gearing up in terms of containment, treatment and setting up of oxygen plants and ICU units, besides providing training to medical teams on ventilators and continuous positive airway pressures (CPAPs) to manage paediatric ICUs ahead of the third wave,” Kumar said.
“We are setting up seven PICUs in all the three regions of the state,” he said, while informing that only NEIGRIHMS and Children’s Hospital have paediatric ICUs.
Besides forming a special medical expert committee for adopting all necessary measures to handle COVID cases among children and pregnant women, essential medicines like IvIG have been procured, Kumar said.
A total of 7.5 lakh people have been vaccinated out of the targetted 20 lakh population above 18 years of age.
“We are vaccinating around 13,000 people every day. People have now started to come forward. But hesitancy is still there among the people due to rumours spread on social media,” Kumar said.
He further said that the state task force will hold a meeting with leaders of various faiths and religions on Wednesday to seek their cooperation in educating people about the vaccine.
He also said that the state government has already received Covaxin doses from Assam and the same has been administered as second dose to returnees who had taken the first dose of Covaxin in other states.
