PANJIM: In view of the exponential rise in COVID cases, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane said he had issued instructions to the Health Department to scale up the infrastructure to tackle the spread of COVID cases in the State.
“I have issued directions to the Health Department to open an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in the South Goa District Hospital (SGDH). We shall further scale up the bed capacity by including Intensive Care Units (ITU) and ICU units at SGDH. Similarly, ESI Hospital (Margao) will also be starting ICU and ITU units to manage rising cases,” said Rane in a tweet.
He also added that he had visited various health centres to review the COVID management status in these places.
“Happy to see that our team of doctors, nurses, paramedical staff and volunteers are working tirelessly to ensure citizens are provided with state-of-the-art facilities, vaccination drive is implemented seamlessly and we are able to fight this pandemic effectively,” he added.
Rane also revealed that the government has also requisitioned the Ponda Hospital on priority and additional beds are being set up there to help meet the rising number of COVID cases. It may be recalled that the Ponda Hospital had become a designated COVID hospital last year.
Speaking about the stock availability of vaccines in the State, Rane said there are enough for the State.
“The Union Health Minister was kind enough to assure me that the Centre will send additional dosages of the vaccine, which will take care of the second dose. The minister also assured to help the State to tide over the shortcomings,” said Rane
