Bengaluru: A marathon meeting was held on Friday April 16 by Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa along with State’s Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr K Sudhakar as well as other senior officials and experts of the Technical Advisory Committee on Covid management in his Home Office of Cauvery in Bengaluru for over an hour and half, to discuss the various steps to be taken with regard to the rise in covid cases.
Speaking to the reporters after the meeting, Yediyurappa said that the present night curfew imposed in Bengaluru, Mangalore, Udupi-Manipal and other cities in Karnataka to contain the spike in Covid infection cases will be continued till April 20 as announced earlier and adopting the next course of action on continuing the night curfew or extending it to other districts or enforcing other restrictions will be taken on April 20.
One of the major decisions announced by the CM today was that the private and corporate sector hospitals have been asked to set up ‘’temporary hospitals’’ in hotels by entering into agreements with the hotels in their neighbourhood for the treatment of cases with mild symptoms. The Covid patients with serious symptoms and conditions will be admitted and provided treatment in the regular hospitals.
The private hospitals have been asked to reserve 50% of beds to the patients admitted by the State Government with immediate effect. As many as 5,000 beds will be reserved in all private medical college hospitals. The government medical college hospitals will reserve 1000 beds for the treatment of Covid patients in addition to 1000 beds in the government hospitals.
The Chief Minister explained that Karnataka does not have shortage of oxygen cylinders at present. Steps have also been taken to establish oxygen production units in the medical colleges, Yediyurappa said.
The Chief Minister announced that a total of 400 ambulances will be reserved for free service for the Covid patients in Bengaluru while steps will be taken to provide ambulances of 108 service to be deployed free of cost in Bengaluru city and also in all district headquarters as per the need.
Yediyurappa said that strict measures will be taken to prevent unnecessary gathering and crowding of people and also strictly enforce containment and micro containment zones.
