Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Monday said the state government will increase the number of oxygen supported beds to 1,000 within the next two weeks for effectively tackling the ongoing second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Addressing media persons, Sangma said after a lot of work done in the last one month, the government has been able to expand the oxygen supported beds from 350 to 750 as of today.
“We are hopeful to expand the oxygen supported beds to 1,000 in the next two weeks,” he said while informing that the state has also doubled the number of oxygen cylinders to 1,500 from 700.
With regards to the ongoing installation of the oxygen generation plants in the state, the chief minister said upgradation in the three hospitals – Shillong civil hospital, Ganesh Das hospital and RP Chest TB hospital will be completed within the next few days.
“We will also see the (installation) oxygen plants in Tura, Jowai and Nongpoh civil hospitals being completed in the next few days. We are also scheduled to complete the oxygen plants at Nongstoin, Williamnagar, Baghmara and Ampati within two weeks,” he said.
Sangma further informed that the government has also decided to set up corona care centres in different parts of the city with the help of the community.
“This is because we are anticipating that we may require more beds. Therefore, we are trying to increase the number of beds at the locality level to cater to cases which may not need hospital services. Roughly about 300 beds will be created,” he said.
According to him, such COVID-19 care centres will be supported by the government with the required manpower and oxygen concentrators
The chief minister said the government is almost completing the 300 beds at IIM, Shillong old campus, 100 at MATI and 100 at NIFT adding “we are also looking at supporting these centres with oxygen concentrators”.
Asked, Sangma said, “Yes we have looked at this 5,000 number and we are prepared for this in that line but it is very important to realize that if the numbers keep growing no matter how many hospital beds or oxygen cylinders we get, we will not be able to make it sufficient for everybody. Therefore, the containment is the most important strategy and only precaution we can take so we need to maintain our restrictions that we have right now and hopefully in days to come we will see that the numbers will start to flatten and hopefully very shortly we should be able to see numbers going down, but it is difficult to say right as we cannot predict anything but we hope that it will happen and for that we need the cooperation of the people and the society at large.”
Regarding the suggestion of the opposition MLAs to have more Covid hospitals, the chief minister said that the government has already taken steps for that.
“Apart from Shillong civil hospital, now RP Chest TB hospital in Umsawli will become a full fledged hospital,” he said.
Sangma also informed that the Assembly Speaker has called for a meeting of all the political parties on Wednesday to discuss the Covid-19 situation in the state.
“We will present all the information to the members of the coalition and other political parties,” he added.
