GUWAHATI, Nov 29 - The Assam government has filed a status report before the Supreme Court vis-a-vis medical care given to COVID-19 patients and the manner of treating bodies.
In its report, the State government submitted that Assam has been managing the pandemic well and that zoning of districts has been done so that if any specific COVID-19 case demands specialised treatment then the patient is immediately referred to the identified medical college and hospital.
The report, submitted before the apex court on Friday, stated infrastructure strengthening of the identified health facilities has been done and recently ICU facilities have been started at most of the district hospitals so that all COVID-19 cases need not be brought to the identified medical college and hospital.
As per the report submitted by the State government, as on November 23, at present 551 isolation beds are currently occupied while 16,868 isolation beds are available.
The Supreme Court, while hearing the suo motu petition on management of medical care given to COVID-19 patients and the manner of treating bodies, had allowed an intervention application filed to bring it to the notice of the court the sorry state of affairs in Assam in treating such patients.
The Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhusan observed that the situation is likely to become grim in the coming months and, accordingly, sought status report from Assam as well as from Delhi, Maharashtra and Gujarat. In Assam, many news reports were published about shortage of ICU beds and oxygen in hospital which even led to several deaths.
Advocates Kaushik Choudhury and Palash Talukdar filed an intervention application in the ongoing suo motu writ petition at the Supreme Court highlighting the problems. The applicants were represented by Supreme Court advocate Pawanshree Agrawal. The application highlighted the unhygienic conditions in various COVID care centres and the exorbitant fees being charged by private hospitals in treating COVID-19 patients and the government�s failure till date to fix hospital fees.
