Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Thursday said the State government was utilising the present crisis to strengthen health infrastructure and had created a huge testing capacity for COVID-19 infection. He regretted that the challenges and limitations of the Centre and States were not discussed in the videoconference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Mr. Gehlot said the efforts initiated by Rajasthan for “ruthless containment” of virus, door-to-door screening, testing and treatment of non-corona diseases, OPD services through 550 mobile vans, institutional deliveries and regular vaccination were widely praised.
“When the first infection was reported here, we did not have any facility to test. Today, we have offered the neighbouring States to conduct 5,000 tests per day,” Mr. Gehlot said, while affirming that the Centre's steps to help the States overcome hardships after the COVID-19 lockdown should have been discussed in the videoconference.
In a letter addressed to the Prime Minister, Mr. Gehlot said since the States had to spend extra for medical resources to deal with the pandemic, the Centre should provide additional support for this. The Centre should also focus on measures to increase demand and transfer funds directly to the needy families, besides providing financial assistance to industries suffering from recession, he said.
The State was ready with enough backup to treat thousands of patients at a single time with 407 hospitals and care centres, Mr. Gehlot said.
43,704 beds
The total number of beds in these health facilities is 43,704, out of which 8,090 are with attached oxygen, 1,672 are intensive care unit beds and 882 are with ventilators.
Additional Chief Secretary (Medical & Health) Rohit Kumar Singh said the projections of active cases in different districts were estimated based on rigorous and intelligent algorithms to plan for any eventuality. “The active cases in the State are below 3,000 for the last 10 days, indicating a flattening of the curve,” he said.
Free medicines
The State government has also launched a campaign, Nirogi Rajasthan, for providing free medicines to the needy and revamping health infrastructure with time. Along with the creation of bedding capacity, the government has kept the supply of PPE kits, N-95 masks and sanitisers intact with no district reporting shortage of equipment.
Mr. Singh said more than 5.84 lakh tests had been conducted in the State so far and the doubling rate had reached 26.57 days, against 19 a few days ago.
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