Kerala puts Covid defence onus on local bodies

Kerala is experimenting with a larger role for the civic authorities in fighting Covid, with ward-level committees being formed to monitor oxygen level of patients and to organise transportation of the needy to hospital.

The new system has been necessitated by the new Covid hospitalisation protocol, which requires mildly infected patients as well as those without major symptoms to stay home.

Under the new system, no patient can go to a hospital directly. It has to be organised by a centralised setup for each panchayat or municipality, which will take stock of the bed situation in all the hospitals at an interval of four hours.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said core teams are being constituted at the panchayat and municipality levels under the respective chairperson, which will include the panchayat or municipality secretary, chairperson of the local health committee, police station house officer, sectoral magistrate and the medical officer.

Each ward-level committee will have access to at least five oximeters, which they will use to monitor the oxygen levels of patients undergoing treatment at their own houses or domiciliary centres for quarantined people.