Indore: The doctors and medical staff are all set to face the Covid-19 third wave if it comes in the city said Dr Vinod Bhandari, chairman of Shri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences. He was talking exclusively to Free Press where he had come to see the vaccination centre being run at the premises.
He said that when the second wave of virus impacted the city the medical staff was unaware of the facts and it took a while for them to understand the strains of the virus and to make a strategy to fight with it.
Dr Bhandari said, “The virus had mutated. It was very deadly and was impacting the lungs very quickly. In the first week of infection patients came with 10 to 20 per cent of infection with the negative report and all of sudden it increased to 80 to 90 per cent within few days or in some case within few hours”.
“To battle this type of strain we divided the patients into categories of vaccinated, non-vaccinated, vaccinated with the first dose, and repeat patient. We investigated the type of variant of virus and its impact on the person’s body and then provided the best possible treatment,” said Dr Bhandari.
He said that we required over 270 ICU beds and over 50 L of oxygen for each patient to bring them to 90% oxygen saturation. Also, the patients needed constant monitoring. We also daily trained our nursing staff for 2 hours before their 10 hours of duty. With the help of all nursing staff, housekeeping staff, paramedical staff, resident doctors, anaesthetist , medicine doctors, and others we faced the second wave.
He also said that they gave priority to people of age group 20 – 55 and their recovery rate was 92 per cent. They also provided 2L – 5L oxygen ventilator and over 50 ventilators were called from UK for the patients.
Dr Bhandari said they were prepared for the third wave, but he appealed to the people to take extra care so that such a thing should not happen. On the risk of children getting infected in the third wave, he said, “We will need pediatric ambulances, ambulance ICU for patients in rural areas, a good transport incubators ambulances for bringing patients to hospitals from rural areas.”
He said that this time there will be no lack of beds, oxygen, injections, or any such things because we have sufficient time to prepare ourselves. Also, many hospitals have started their own oxygen plants and there won't be any shortage of oxygen.
He said, "We are starting a new concept in our COVID rehabilitation centre at Mohak headed by Dr Mohit and Dr Mahakwhere Covid recovered patients and Covid negative patients who are still having breathlessness, weakness and many other problems will be treated. We have started new department - Clinical physiology which has doctors from the field of pulmonary medicine and physiotherapists.
To treat such people we are having machines like Accurate VO2 measurements for resting and Exercise Testing, VO2max, and sub-max V02, Resting Energy Expenditure (REE, RMR), Built-in application for developing individual Weight Management programme, Fitness Assessment, Body Composition and Risk Analysis, and other such machines.
These machines help in measuring oxygen concentration in the body at sea level and many other reports so as to help patients in future planning of treatment for complete early recovery, said Dr Bhandari. “Gnome sequencing machine is also there which will help in identifying virus mutant. It will help in providing proper treatment to the infected patients. We have 16 tons capacity oxygen plant and plan to set up two plants of three tons capacity and one plant of six tons capacity in the hospital premises”, said Dr Bhandari.
Tips for parents to protect their children from the third wave
1. Make the child wear a mask whenever they take their children outside the house
2. Should not let children go out alone
3. Do not expose children to people who come from outside the house
4. If a child suffers from fever, cough, cold, or any such disease they should take him to a doctor immediately.
