Bengaluru: Frontline workers are currently the saving grace for every country and if it wasn’t for them, we would all have been a disaster when it comes to keeping up with the Coronavirus pandemic. And now, in what can be seen as a welcome move, Karnataka Medical Education Minister, Dr Sudhakar has instructed the officials to put their final year students on COVID 19 duty to meet their testing targets and not be short on staff.
Not just direct recruitments, but these final year students who are a part of lab technician courses, RGUHS’s science students as well as volunteers working on the frontlines will also be provided with adequate training before they begin their COVID 19 duty.
This decision came through after the Minister conducted a meeting via a video conference. As has been said in a press statement by Dr Sudhakar, currently, they have an aim to conduct 30,000 tests in Bengaluru alone and they have been failing to do so due to lack of skilled staff. While help is being taken from private labs and fever clinics, it is not summing up to enough and even the mobile units don’t have enough manpower, and hence, this decision has been taken under the Disaster Management Act.
Apart from the everyday testing targets and the requirement of skilled manpower, there were discussions about admitting them in Covid Care Centres and Hospitals, provide ambulances, etc, and directions regarding the same were also given to the zonal teams for recruitments, etc.
As far as the number of COVID 19 cases are concerned, the state has recorded 80,863 cases and 29,310 patients have been discharged while over 1600 have lost their lives. Currently, there are almost 50,000 active cases in the state as per reports from Union Health Ministry.
