Guwahati: Assam Chief Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma visited the Guwahati Medical College Hospital (GMCH) at around 2:30 AM on Sunday and took stock of the COVID situation.
As the country is fighting the second wave of COVID-19, the new CM said that the state will start an 'odd-hour management' process in government medical colleges and other hospitals.
He posted on Twitter, "Managing critical patients at odd hours is always a challenge. At 2.30 am, I visited GMCH to see how #Covid patients are being given treatment in Emergency Ward at night. I was satisfied with the arrangements. I reiterate my gratitude to doctors & nursing staff for their help."
The CM added that they have already discussed odd-hour management where senior doctors have to do duty from 11 PM to 7 AM. They have seen that maximum patients died during the night. Some of them came at night time in hospital and after two to three hours the patient died.
"Most of the senior doctors do duty during the day shift. Now they have to do duty during the night also. CCTV cameras were fixed in every ward and we will monitor everything," he said.
The CM further said that they have an adequate amount of oxygen cylinders till now. No bed scarcity at Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) but the government will increase bed capacity and the process has been started at Sarusajai.
Meanwhile, the government has extended curfew timings in the state from 2 PM to 12 PM from Sunday.
"We have seen that COVID positive cases decreased from 1600 to 1000 in Guwahati after extending curfew timings. So, we have decided to extend curfew timings from 2 pm to 12 pm. We will monitor the positivity rate during one week," he added.
On Saturday, Sarma said that a decision is likely to be taken on whether to impose lockdown in the three-most affected locations - Guwahati, Dibrugarh, and Tinsukia after assessing the COVID situation in the next 4-5 days. He had earlier mentioned that the government is not looking at putting the entire state under lockdown.
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