Dharmadhikari donates agricultural implements for Pragati Bandhu members

Bengaluru, Jul 22: Karnataka's Covid-19 task force on Tuesday decided that the state government will regulate the supply of Remdesivir, the drug used in the treatment of coronavirus infected patients, to private hospitals to check black marketing and hoarding.

"Remdesivir which is currently available in the government hospitals will be supplied to private hospitals through the government.

This will help curb black marketing of this drug," Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar's office said in a release.

Along with Sudhakar, other task force members, including Health Minister Sriramulu, Deputy Chief Minister C N Ashwath Narayan and Chief Secretary T M Vijay Bhaskar attended the meeting. However, Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai was not part of it as he was out of Bengaluru.

At the meeting, the government has also fixed the rate for Covid-19 tests in private labs- Rs 2,000 for government referred cases and 3,000 for self-reporting cases.

It was also decided to purchase 4 lakh antigen test kits and 5 lakh swab test kits to ramp up testing, the release said, adding that approvals have also been given for additional drugs for the treatment of Covid-19 patients.

The decisions also included increasing monthly salary for Ayush doctors to 48,000, MBBS doctors to 80,000 and nurses to get 30,000 for next 6 months.

The task force also made it clear that private hospitals have to reserve 50 percent beds for the government for Covid-19 treatment. The remaining 50 percent can be used by the private hospitals for Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 treatment.

Private hospitals provide treatment under Ayushman Bharat scheme (ABARK) for Covid-19 patients.

Those cases in which treatment does not cover under the scheme can be charged as per the user charges, the release said.

A committee will be formed to supervise and recommend the purchase of equipment and medicines for Covid-19 treatment, which will be headed by ACS, ITBT Department.

Approval has been given for the procurement of N-95 masks and lakh PPE kits for the safety of healthcare workers. The decision also has been taken to connect oxygen pipeline to 4,736 beds in 17 government medical colleges, which will enable high flow oxygen for these beds besides being beneficial for future use as well.

According to the release, 16 RTPCR and 15 Automated RNA extraction units will be established to ramp up testing and this will help achieve the target of 50,000 tests per day. "On the whole approvals given for purchase of equipment and upgradation of existing facilities at government hospitals is estimated to be about Rs 500 Crore," it added.

Ballari, Mar 6: Ballari Deputy Commissioner S S Nakul on Friday said that two persons who had shown symptoms of COVID-19 had been admitted to the district government hospital here.

Informing this to the presspersons here, Mr Nakul said that the cases were reported from Jindal village of K R Hospital taluk and another one from Hospet town in Ballari taluk.

He said a suspect returned from Dubai to Hospet last week and showed symptoms of COVID-19. Both suspected patients were admitted to special isolated ward in Ballari government hospital and their throat swab tests taken on Thursday had been sent to lab in Bangalore to check for COVID-19.

Chitradurga, Apr 11: Akhila Bharata Hindu Mahasabha district president M Kumaraswamy has been arrested by Police on charges of posting provocative posts on Facebook.

Police said on Saturday that Syed Sadath who is the Popular Front of India District Secretary, in Chitradurga filed a complaint stating that Mr Kumaraswamy had posted ''Godhra riots will be repeated by Karsevaks'' on his Facebook page on April 7.

Mr Sadath said that Kumaraswamy was spreading communal hatred and targeting one community, at a time when the world was struggling to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.