1,200-bed COVID facility at Asarwa Civil is back as women’s hospital

After serving as the state’s biggest hospital dedicated to Covid treatment for close to a year, the 1,200-bed facility on Civil hospital campus was restored and returned back as the women and children’s hospital that it was prepandemic. A puja was held to mark the reopening of the women’s hospital on Tuesday. The ceremony was attended by a large number of doctors, nursing staff and management officials.

The Multi-Speciality Women and Children’s hospital, a giant facility called Medicity in the Civil hospital complex, was repurposed to treat Covid patients exclusively when the pandemic began. It admitted its first Covid-positive case on March 19, 2020 in isolation ward D-9, said medical superintendent Dr J V Modi. As the patient numbers sky-rocketted, the hospital was converted into a dedicated covid facility on April 7. In the course of one year, it received as many as 70,000 Covid patients and served as the primary centre in the state for coronavirus treatment, complete with in-house PT-CPR testing and other facilities.

Sanitised, restored into pristine state Before being returned for its original purpose, the hospital was put to 10 days of extensive cleaning, sanitization and fumigation, Dr Modi said. The entire cycle was performed twice over the period to render it safe to be used as a women’s hospital.

At the end of it all, the hospital is better off now after being used for long as a Covid treatment centre. It has inherited a new in-house blood bank, new plasma bank, a pathology laboratory, CT scan machine, digital X-ray machines, apart from PT-PCR testing lab etc – all left behind by the outgoing Covid hospital.

For now, just Block O of the building has been kept reserved for Covid patients.

The 200-bed space only has 32 Covid patients currently, none of them on ventilator, said Dr Modi. Asked about vaccinations, the doctor said a good 92% of the staff working on the premises, including doctors, paramedics, health workers and sanitation workers, have taken the first shot of the Covid vaccine. Of these, 53 individuals have also taken the booster shot, he said.

India Times