BHUBANESWAR: Amid falling new infections, Odisha is planning to unlock districts with low positivity rate while getting ready for a possible third wave of Covid infections, chief minister Naveen Patnaik said here on Tuesday.
“Unlocking districts where positivity rate is declining in a phased manner is under active consideration of the state government,” a government statement quoted Naveen as saying in a review meeting on state’s Covid situation.
The government has announced the ongoing lockdown to continue till June 17.
Sources said there may be some relaxations in districts with positivity less than five percent soon while the lockdown won’t extend further.
The number of active cases have drastically fallen in western-southern districts.
Northern (Mayurbhanj and Balasore) and Costal (Khurda, Cuttack, Puri, Jagatsinghpur and Jajpur) districts are showing a rising number of cases.
In the past one week from June 1 to June 7, five districts of Ganjam, Sonepur, Kandhamal, Gajapati and Balangir reported test positivity rate of less than five percent.
Eight other districts of Koraput, Malkangiri, Nuapada, Deogarh, Keonjhar, Kalahandi, Bargarh and Sambalpur had positivity between five to 10%.
Daily positivity in 12 districts of Sundargarh, Deogarh, Jharsuguda, Bargarh, Nuapada, Balangir, Sonepur, Sambalpur, Kalahandi, Kandhamal, Gajapati and Ganjam was less than four per cent with Ganjam reporting the lowest at 1.82%.
A state government projection said with the current trend in last few days with a decline rate of 4.5%, the daily +ve cases will fall to 2,955 by June 21, which is 5896 on Tuesday.
The total active cases will reduce to 36,815 by then from the current 66,172.
Considering public health experts’ predictions that children may be affected more in a possible third wave, Naveen asked the government officers to get prepared for a worst case scenario, a government officer said.
For pediatric Covid care, the government is planning to create 3000 dedicated beds for children, including 610 ICU beds.
Total 1114 doctors and 1036 staff nurses would be trained for paediatric care by the COVID capacity building team, the government said.
Sources said the government has been getting ready anticipating 10,000 daily infections in the third wave.
The state health department has decided to earmark 1610 general beds and 610 intensive care beds for children in existing 85 Covid hospitals and seven government medical colleges.
The medical colleges will have 155 general beds and 202 ICU beds.
The Covid hospitals which have 10,736 isolation beds and 4072 ICUs, will reserve 1455 general beds and 408 ICU beds for the paediatric age group.
Apart from the dedicated Covid hospitals, the health department has asked all district 32 headquarters hospitals and 20 sub-divisional hospitals would earmark 10 isolation beds each and more than 200 community health centres will have two to four beds each.
Additional chief secretary (health) Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra said a sero survey planned by Regional Medical Research Centre in mid-June in Ganjam, Koraput and Rayagada will specially focus on children to understand the extent of infections in them.
Mohapatra on Tuesday wrote to all medical colleges and chief district medical and public health officers to stock enough medicines, consumables and medical oxygen keeping in mind the children.
“In areas where caseloads are expected to be high, establishment of standalone paediatric Covid care facilities will be considered,” Mohapatra wrote.