State govt to shift vaccination centres from hospitals, PHCs to schools and other safer locations

Bengaluru: The Karnataka government has decided to shift all coronavirus vaccination centres from hospitals and Primary Health Centre (PHCs) to schools, colleges, and other safer locations.

The decision was taken at the meeting of the state task force to combat COVID-19 chaired by Deputy Chief Minister and Task Force Chief Dr CN Ashwath Narayan.

Several decisions were taken including procurement of two lakh pulse oximeters for patients in home isolation and Covid Care Centres.

Narayan informed that one crore RT-PCR test kits will be procured to ramp up the testing, 100 per cent of the beds in Taluk hospital will be converted into Oxygen beds and at least 100 ICU beds will be set up in each district hospital, while 1,000 Oxycare systems developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will be purchased including 100 manual and 900 automatic.

He said a global tender to procure 5 lakh Remdesivir will be floated and 75 crores have been earmarked for this purpose. The minister said bottling plants will be set up at six locations to strengthen the oxygen supply chain.

Oxygen generators and Oxygen concentrators will be provided to Community health centers and genome labs will be established at six locations across the state to study genetic sequencing of mutant strains, he said.

Health Minister Dr K Sudhakar and officials of the child and family welfare department, and health department also attended the meeting.

Over the few two days, Karnataka overtook Maharashtra as the state with the highest number of active coronavirus cases (5,98,625) in the country, the Union Health Ministry informed.

So far, 15,10,557 recoveries and 21,085 deaths have been reported in the state.

(With inputs from ANI)