 "Odisha to provide booster dose to health workers as Covid cases rise")
As part of its preparedness for the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Odisha government on Sunday asked the district authorities to ensure that doctors, nurses and other health workers dealing with coronavirus patients get the booster dose of the vaccine on priority.
The direction was issued by Chief Secretary SC Mohapatra to district collectors while reviewing the surge of COVID-19 cases along with detection of Omicron cases in the state.
Districts are all set to combat the omicron situation and provide proper treatment to the infected people, Mohapatra said after the meeting.
The chief secretary also directed that all covid hospitals and covid care centres put in place a help desk system for communication with family members and relatives of patients.
He said that no patient should feel neglected in hospitals.
Additional Chief Secretary, health and family welfare, RK Sharma said that all facilities and provisions put in place during the second wave of the pandemic should be reactivated with full force.
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He also asked the district collectors to recruit retired doctors and nurses locally as per requirement.
Odisha recorded 4,714 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, 28 per cent more than the previous day, and the biggest single-day spike in nearly six months, the Health Department said. The caseload rose to 10.71 lakh.
The state has so far detected 75 cases of Omicron variant of coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Odisha has ordered five lakh OmiSure kits for early detection of the new variant, the manufacturer of the kit, TATA Medical & Diagnostics, said.
The orders were placed with the company by the Odisha State Medical Corporation Limited (OSMCL), an independent procurement agency for the Department of Health and Family Welfare.
Odisha is the first state in the country to place orders for OmiSure kits for Omicron detection at point of first line testing, the company said in a statement.
The OmiSure is the first Omicron-specific COVID-19 detection RT-PCR test kit which is developed indigenously, the company said.
It is the only kit approved by the ICMR for RT-PCR detection of the Omicron variant, it claimed.