Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur on Tuesday announced that doctors and para-medical staff working at COVID hospitals would receive financial incentive till June this year. The fourth and fifth year MBBS students, contractual doctors and junior/senior residents would be provided an incentive of Rs 3,000 per month while nursing students, General Nursing and Midwifery (GNM) third year students and contractual lab staff would be provided an incentive of Rs 1,500 per month, he said.
The announcement was made during a video meeting with officials of Kangra, convened in view of sharp surge in cases of this pandemic in the district.
Later in the day, the CM visited Radhaswami Satsang Vyas at Paraur in the district and directed officials to create an additional bed capacity of 250 within next 10 days that would gradually increase to about 1,000 beds.
Out of the 3,59,489 samples been collected in Kangra so far, 19,570 have tested positive, Kangra Deputy Commissioner Rakesh Prajapati said.
There were 5,384 active cases in the district and the positivity rate was 5.44 percent while recovery rate was 70.34 percent, he said.
Prajapati further said the vaccination drive was going smoothly and till date, 3,82,851 doses of vaccine had been administered to frontline workers, corona warriors and people above the age of 45.
The CM has directed officials to ensure smooth supply of oxygen and to enhance the availability of ICU beds in Kangra.
He said private laboratories must be empanelled and requisitioned so more RT-PCR tests were conducted and results were provided at the earliest.
He also said that a foolproof mechanism must be evolved for transportation of patients to the hospitals besides making adequate arrangements to drop them home after treatment.
The central government has sanctioned six PSA oxygen plants for the state, which would be set up at civil hospital, Palampur; zonal hospital, Mandi; civil hospital, Rohru and civil hospital, Khaneri; Y.S Parmar government medical college and hospital, Nahan; and regional hospital, Solan, the CM noted.
He said this would ensure adequate oxygen supply to about 1,400 beds in these health institutions.
Apart from 1,000 bed capacity to be created at Paraur, efforts were on to create bed capacity of 200 at Radha Swami Satsang Vyas complex in Mandi and 300 beds at new OPD block of IGMCH in Simla.
In addition, the space has also been identified at Baddi-Barotiwala area for creating an additional 500 bed capacity for COVID patients.
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