Healthcare providers urged the separation of hospitals into Covid-19

With Covid-19 cases in the capital increasingly growing, Healthcare providers have urged the separation of hospitals into Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 treatment facilities.

Maj Gen Aamer Ikram, Director General of the National Health Institute (NIH), said that even though the developed countries found it difficult to set up specialized hospitals for specific diseases, Covid-19 offered opportunities for this.

“We have built a 250-bed hospital for Covid 19 patients in Chak Shahzad. Completion of the hospital was a bit delayed by precipitation; I hope that it will be completed within a two-day span, “he said, adding:” Afterwards it will be used to treat the patients with Covid-19, and afterward these hospitals will be repeated around the country.

Likewise, Dr. Waseem Khawaja, spokesperson for the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims), stressed the need to divide hospitals into two different categories: those that handle only patients with Covid-19 and those that handle everyone else.

He said all Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 patients would not be handled in a single hospital at the same time.

He added that hospitals outside of Covid-19 could be treated by the Federal General Services and the Capital Development Authority.

Dr. Khawaja added that it is time to protect all healthcare staff, including the gradual spread of coronavirus. He said there should be protection for medical professionals so they can treat others.

He said most of the Covid-19 patients admitted to Islamabad hospitals are not the town’s citizens. Such patients should be sent back to their hometowns or neighborhoods, where they can be isolated and treated.

He said that if patients who are not residents of Islamabad and non-Covid-19 cases are treated there, it would be a greater burden on Pims. He said patients with Covid-19 would be grouped according to their residential addresses.