Corona: Maha, Guj, UP reach agreement with pvt sector for affordable treatment

NEW DELHI: As part of efforts to provide reasonable healthcare to COVID-19 patients, some states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Madhya Pradesh have reached an agreement with the private sector, the Union Health Ministry said on Tuesday.

Amid reports of a likely shortage of healthcare infrastructure, the ministry had on Monday asked states and union territories to proactively engage with private healthcare providers to facilitate enhanced bed availability and critical care health facilities and to ensure fair and transparent charges for services provided.

"Some states like Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh have already taken the initiative.

"They have negotiated and reached an agreement with the private sector on reasonable rates and arrangements to provide critical care for in-patient COVID-19 admissions," the ministry said. States have also been asked to proactively engage with the private sector health providers and consider pooling in public and private healthcare facilities, as this will help in providing prompt, good quality and reasonable healthcare to COVID-19 patients.

As the virus tally reached 3,43,091 on Tuesday and the death toll rose to 9,900, the ministry also said the testing capacity for detecting COVID-19 is being continuously ramped up and it now has a capacity to test three lakh samples per day. A network of 907 labs, including 659 labs in the government sector and 248 in the private sector, have been created in the country as on date, the ministry said, reiterating that RT-PCR is the gold standard frontline test for diagnosis of COVID-19.