Deputy CM CN Ashwatha Narayan for greater care for Covid patients in home isolation to ease pressure on hospitals

Bengaluru: Deputy Chief Minister Dr C.N.Ashwatha Narayan, who heads State COVID Task Force, directed the senior officials in charge of the COVID management to plug the loopholes in helpline 1912, to create a transparent bed allot system, and to develop an integrated index app, within two days.

Following his appointment as chairman of the reconstituted Task Force, he convened a meeting on Monday evening with senior officials who are leading the COVID management.

The COVID helpline should be strengthened so that it should be able to receive all calls, he said and added that for this, measures should be taken to increase the line capacity of the helpline. Further, the professional call centers of private telecom companies can be roped in to manage the calls. This will help to resolve the confusion arising out of unprofessional management of calls which persists now, he suggested.

At present bed reservation has become a major problem and there is a lack of transparency in the bed allocation system. This should be made automatic and transparent. As and when the patient gets admitted and discharged the data should be made automatically updated on a real-time basis, Narayan emphasized.

"At present, the COVID data is split among many set-ups and available only in bits and pieces. There are several set-ups such as 1912 helpline, Aptha Mitra, Step 1 hospitals, Step 2 centers, Zonal level, Primary Health Centers, Home Isolation, 104, 108 and so on which are all engaged in pandemic management. But the data that is being collected from these set-ups is not being shared and integrated. This should be immediately sorted out by creating an 'Integrated Index App', which would serve as a single common platform," Narayan explained.

He told that about 92% of the COVID affected are being home isolated and only 8% require hospital admissions. In view of this, caring for the home isolated should be made systematic. "If the home isolated are neglected and kept out of the loop of COVID management it will lead to anxiety," Narayan said and promised to promptly issue required government orders for implementation of any measures to achieve the goal.

Gourav Gupta, Chief Commissioner, BBMP, P.Pradeep, Secretay to Deputy CM, COVID war room in-charge and senior IAS officer Tushar Girinath, Pushkar, Gopal, and other officials were present.