Odisha plans to vaccinate 3 lakh persons a day ahead of 3rd Covid wave

Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday said it aims to vaccinate 300,000 eligible residents daily, almost doubling the current rate of 140,000-160,000 vaccine doses administered daily. He also stressed on the need to improve paediatric healthcare ahead of a possible third wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The second Covid-19 wave is more or less under control in Odisha with cases declining by 0.5- 1% daily.

Patnaik reviewed the Covid situation in the state on Tuesday evening and asked the health department to create separate paediatric healthcare wings at existing Covid hospitals keeping in mind that isolation of paediatric Covid-19 cases was not possible in general wards. All district hospitals and sub divisional hospitals have been asked to earmark 10 beds for isolating suspected paediatric Covid cases.

Of the 10,736 general beds and 4,072 ICU (intensive care unit) and HDU (high dependency unit) beds in Covid hospitals, at least 15% beds will be reserved for paediatric cases with the aim to make at least 2,850 general beds and 150 ICU beds available anticipating 10,000 daily infections in the third wave, as per the projections made by a government appointed task force.

The government said it will also train 1,114 doctors and 1,036 nurses in paediatric Covid care. Currently, there are 454 paediatric specialists employed with the state government apart from 94 doctors, who are pursuing post graduate studies in paediatrics.

The government also discussed modalities of lifting the lockdown from districts with low Covid test positivity rate (TPR) after June 17. Though the daily TPR in the state has climbed down to 8.5%, the weekly TPR continued to be high in at least 17 districts with Bhadrak’s TPR at 31.83%. Five districts including Bolangir reported TPR of less than 5%.

Odisha’s director of Health Services Dr Bijay Kumar Mohapatra said if the trend of 0.5% to 1% daily fall continues, then the TPR would drop below 5% in 7 to 8 days.

On the grim side, the daily Covid-19 fatality count reached 45 on Tuesday, the highest so far.

“Many patients are admitted in the ICUs and are on ventilators. The recovery rate of patients on ventilators is very low and that is the reason for [the] rising [number of] fatalities,” said Mohapatra.