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The Health Ministry on Tuesday came out with a guidance document on the coronavirus crisis in India. As per the document, there will be three classes of facilities for various categories of COVID-19 patients. First, COVID care centers will offer care only for cases that have been clinically assigned as mild or very mild cases of COVID suspect case, the Health Ministry said today. The COVID care centres can be makeshift facilities, or can be government/private facilities such as hostels/schools/hotels. Quarantine centres too can be upgraded as COVID Care centres.
"We have asked states to map each COVID Care Centre with one COVID Care Hospital and COVID Care Health Centre , so that there is clarity at field level on where the patients can be shifted, if need be," an official of the ministry said.
The second class of facility is COVID Health Centre, to monitor all cases that have been clinically assigned as moderate. These shall be hospitals or dedicated blocks in hospitals with proper triaging, to prevent spread of infection, the ministry said.
The third class of facilities are dedicated COVID Hospitals, which shall offer comprehensive care primarily for those who have been clinically assigned as severe or critical cases of COVID-19.
Eight COVID-19 patients died and 354 news cases were reported in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of infected people in the country to 4,421, the Union Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
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