KOLKATA: The 10-member expert committee set up by the state government, after its first meeting on Thursday, has suggested several measures to counter the third wave.
The committee has suggested, among other things, making vaccine certificates a must to enter shopping malls and setting up of an epidemiologist team to identify the viral strains that could dominate the third wave.
“Strain identification of the virus is very important as this would be helpful in determining whether that particular strain is more or less virulent than previous strains.
There is the need to form an epidemiologist team without any delay for this task,” said the proposal.
The proposal that vaccination cards be made mandatory for adults to enter places like malls and movie halls has found resonance with physicians who felt that the move would enhance safety in large air-conditioned spaces that are potential crowd-pullers.
Two malls in the city had in fact toyed with the idea of introducing a no-vaccine-no-entry policy but dropped it after retailers opposed the move.
At least five malls in the city currently have vaccination centres housed in them.
The state has already started ramping up paediatric Covid facilities in terms of infrastructure and manpower because of the hypothesis that more children could be affected in the third wave.
While the government has already set up an expert paediatrics team, another expert committee was set up on Tuesday for monitoring the overall evolving situation.
The committee also proposed that at least 80% of patients admitted in general wards should have access to centralised oxygen supply.
While most government-run hospitals in the city and some in medical colleges in districts have LMO tanks, the problem is with district and sub-divisional hospitals.
Health department sources said efforts are on to install LMO tanks in those hospitals as well.
“Number of SNCU and PICU beds should be scaled up in next two weeks,” said the proposal.
Most hospitals in Kolkata, including RG Kar, BC Roy Hospital for Children, Medical College Hospital and Chittaranjan Seva Sadan are confident of getting between 10 and 25 beds prepared during this time frame.
Giving special preference to children with co-morbidity as and when a vaccine for children is rolled out, adequate supply of protective gears like N95 mask and a protocol for prophylactic ivermectin to Covid-negative mothers who would be admitted along with their infected children was also proposed.