Upload availability of beds on portal, Chandigarh hospitals told

Naina Mishra

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 23

A day after Chandigarh Tribune highlighted that no hospital in the UT, barring the GMCH-32, is uploading its bed availability status on the online portal, the UT Health Department has directed all hospitals to upload the status on the website in view of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

UT Health Secretary Yashpal Garg, while taking cognisance of the report published in Chandigarh Tribune, wrote to the heads of all health institutions, “It has been brought to the notice of the undersigned that except for the GMCH-32, no other hospital/health facility is updating the status of bed availability on the portal. The system of updating the data was started as per the directions of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and it seems that after reduction in the number of patients, it has been discontinued.”

Garg further wrote, “Considering the emergent issues, especially because of Omicron, the new variant of concern, the bed availability status should be updated on the portal. Issue a direction to all hospitals/health facilities (government and private sector) functioning in the UT for compliance from today itself.”

The portal had come into existence during the second wave when the UT was reeling under shortage of beds and the public was hard pressed for information on bed availability in the hospitals for their kin suffering from serious Covid-19 infection.

According to the portal, a majority of hospitals stopped the practice of updating the bed availability in the month of July when the second wave subsided. However, some hospitals continued till August and September.

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