State forms a 3-member committee to frame guidelines for treatment of +ve senior citizens

Kolkata: State health department formed a 3-member expert committee with the Head of the department of Gastroenterology at SSKM at its top to prepare guidelines for the treatment of Covid infected elderly people who have been undergoing treatment with various complications at the ICU and CCU of various hospitals.

The health department is giving utmost importance to the treatment of elderly patients requiring critical care support so that mortality rate can be reduced further.

Unlike the second wave of Covid, the mortality rate in Bengal is much lesser this time and the rate of hospital admission is also on the lower side.

Apart from some elderly complicated patients, most of the Omicron infected patients are undergoing treatment at home. Most are not at all requiring hospitalisation except comorbid patients. State government had issued specific guidelines for treatment of Covid patients during the previous waves as well.

The committee comprising of SSKM Gastroenterology Head Dr GK Dhali, Dr Avik Ghosh, an architect of Diamond Harbour 'Doctors' on Wheels' model and a senior doctor from Beliaghata ID Sanjeeb Banerjee will formulate guidelines as to how best treatment can be provided to the critical patients.

The committee will also examine the details of the high risk patients in various critical care units.

Health department has also given clear instructions to the hospitals that no emergency operations can be delayed on the pretext of Covid tests.

Emergency surgeries must be done even without waiting for the Covid report of the patient. Surgeries can be done on the basis of the report of rapid tests.

When the second wave peaked in May last year, the daily fatalities remained at around 80-140 on an average basis.

The daily infection had also touched 20,000 marks.

But Bengal has currently been witnessing around 20,000 daily infected figures but the number of daily deaths now varies between 10 to 20 on an average basis. Bengal on Friday registered the fatality rate at 1.07 per cent.

The hospital admission rate is below 6 percent in the state. According to sources, less than 6 percent of Covid beds are occupied currently. There are over 33,000 Covid beds in the state.

The city doctors, however, warned that if large scale infection continues for long the number of fatalities will gradually increase even though the daily death is much below this time.

The intensity of infection is much lesser compared to the second wave when the delta variant caused many more fatalities, experts opined.