Noida issues new guidelines for hosps demanding Remdesivir for patients

Noida: The Gautam Buddh Nagar district health department on Thursday issued new set of guidelines for those who are looking for Remdesivir injections for their patients. The move is expected to ease off the scramble for the highly demanded medicine.

As per new guidelines, the hospitals treating Covid patients have to issue prescriptions to the family of the patients.

"The hospital has to give in writing that they do not have any dose of Remdesivir injections to give to the patient. The written statement will also mention the medical condition of patient and the need to provide it to the patient," a senior health officer said.

The district health department has also assured that they have adequate quantity of Remdesivir injections available to them. This came after people started gathering in large number outside CMO office in Noida in order to get written permission for Remdesivir injections and reports of some casualties after patients were not provided with these injections due to huge rush.

Meanwhile, amid rising Covid cases, the testing has been badly affected in both Gautam Buddh Nagar and Ghaziabad with people facing problem in not only getting them tested at government centers but at home as well. While the RT-PCR reports are taking a week's time, there is a huge rush at testing government centers which is increasing the risk of infection as well.

In order to avoid huge rush at testing centres, people are now choosing for home sample collection. However, all the major laboratories in these two smart cities have stopped taking home samples owing to longer wait time in getting reports.

After calling on the numbers of various centres of Dr Lal Pathology lab, the attendant denied for RT-PCR tests and maintained that they are only conducting antigen tests. At some centres, they even denied for antigen tests citing shortage of testing kits.