Howrah to get another Covid dedicated hosp

Kolkata: In a bid to increase the total number of beds for treatment of COVID-19 patients, the Howrah District Administration is setting up a 400-bed dedicated COVID-19 hospital at the annex building of Balitikuri ESI.

At present there are around 960 beds in different COVID-19 hospitals including Baltikuri ESI Hospital and now with setting up of 400 bed hospital in its annex building, the total number of beds in the district would go up to 1,360.

Dr Bhabani Das, Chief Medical Officer (Health) of Howrah, said: "The work has been started to set up a COVID-19 hospital at the annex building of Baltikuri ESI Hospital. It will be a 400-bed hospital and it is expected to get operational by the first week of

September."

The district administration was running a 200-bed safe home at the annex building. Now the decision was taken to convert it to a full-fledged COVID-19 hospital.

Recently, the state-run TL Jaiswal Hospital has been turned into a dedicated COVID-19 hospital in the district where there are 200 beds. Besides TL Jaiswal

Hospital, there are six COVID-19 hospitals in the district including Satyabala ID Hospital with 25 beds, ESI Uluberia with 216 beds, ILS Hospitals with around 89 beds,

Narayana Hospital with around 50 beds and ESI Baltikuri with 230 beds for COVID-19 treatment.

According to a senior district official, the step to add more number of beds has been taken up with the spike in the COVID-19 cases in the

state.

"The work of creating necessary infrastructure at the annex building of Baltikuri ESI Hospital is going on in full swing and our endeavour is to make it functional as early as possible. We are already ahead in terms of the existing infrastructure to fight the present COVID-19 situation, but further development is considered to be needed to ensure better facilities," the official added.