Rupesh Samant

Panaji, Apr 2: Amidst the rising number of Covid-19 cases, the Goa government has decided to keep its Covid-19 hospitals and Covid Care Centres ready.

The state executive committee, chaired by state chief secretary Parimal Rai, took stock of the situation on Friday.

“The SEC decided that other Covid hospitals and Covid Care Centres should be kept ready for receiving more patients in case the need arises as the health secretary informed that both the district hospitals have more than half of their bed capacity occupied,” the spokesperson for the state government said.

He said that both the district collectors were directed to identify hotels willing for paid Covid Care Centres for those who seek such facility for institutional isolation.

The committee also decided for strict enforcement activities and preventive protocols across the state taking into account the spread of the cases uniformly, reported more from high density urban areas, he said.

The spokesman said that the committee while directing the health department, police and department of information and publicity to carry out aggressive awareness campaigns stressed the need for collectors and police to strictly implement the existing preventive guidelines to enforce Covid appropriate behaviour including levying fines for violations.

“SEC urged for implementing the norm of track-test-treat and to ramp up testing facilities to ensure higher testing rate and timely declaration of RT-PCR test results to contain timely identify the number of potential positive cases,” he added.

The spokesperson said that the SEC also directed the collectors to issue advisory to all possible crowded places, hotels, restaurants, gyms, marriage halls, industries, mall operators, etc to enforce the Covid appropriate behaviour and guidelines issued from time to time and to undertake random checks to ensure strict adherence of the SOPs.