Centre asks Chandigarh admin to focus on non-Covid patients as well

Adviser Manoj Parida said that they were asked to focus on non Covid patients too. “We were told that non-Covid patients like those suffering from cancer, heart patients should also be focused on,” he said.

Details of samples taken on daily basis, quarantine centres and availability of beds were also discussed.

Non-Covid patients have been facing a tough time in the absence of OPD, especially when most of them used to depend on PGIMER. On a normal day, PGI’s OPDs would see around 12,000 patients and due to the pandemic, most have been going through the tele-consultation process.

PGIMER in Chandigarh caters to a large number of patients from neighbouring states of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. Due to the pandemic, the OPDs have remained largely nonfunctional, making it tough for non-Covid patients. The OPDs have not been working and non COVID patients have been facing a tough time.

Doctors have been looking at patients online, and call them to the OPD on a per-case basis. On Tuesday itself, there were 525 patients in OPD and 1,358 patients were attended through tele-consultation.

Sources said that on a day when there are 100 beds in the Advanced Trauma centre, the admissions were over 160 leaving the institute overburdened. Even people from peripheral areas of Punjab and Haryana prefer visiting PGI.

In May, the UT Administrator had advised the three chiefs of the institutes to open Non-Covid facilities gradually, but doctors have been apprehensive to do so.

“It is a catch 22 situation to open the OPDs. Patients come from neighboring areas and they can be infected and can further infect not just all other patients here but the health care workers as well,” said a senior doctor, on the condition of anonymity. Over 1,200 non-Covid patients are currently admitted in the emergency block.