Delhi: Lok Nayak Hospital prepares special ward for patients affected by mutant strains

The Arvind Kejriwal government-run Lok Nayak Hospital has prepared a special ward to house the patients who are affected by mutant strains of SARS-VCoV-2.

The move has come after the Union Health Ministry confirmed presence of two strains of two variants of novel Coronavirus in a few states as well as a rising number of cases infected by the UK, Brazil and South African variant, the hospital said.

"The government has instructed us to make a special ward for such patients. We have demarcated a separate building for this purpose since these variants are found highly infectious and transmit more easily," Dr Suresh Kumar, director, Lok Nayak told IANS.

He also said that the ward will have separate resources as well to control the exposure. "The staff deputed in that ward will provide service exclusively there. They will not be allowed to intermingle. This is to contain transmission," Kumar added.

Delhi government's health department has chalked out initial plans to deal with the mutant strains. So far, Lok Nayak is the only facility in the national capital which is treating the patients who are found infected from the UK variant.

The government will now be using the hospital for all those who would be found infected with the different variants of Covid-19.

"We had 26 patients of the UK strain. While most of them exhibited mild symptoms, two experienced severeness and were admitted to the ICU for a few days. They were given Remdisivir and have been discharged. Currently, we have only eight such patients in the hospital," Kumar informed.

Putting breaks to week-long speculations over the finding of new strains in Maharashtra, the Union Health Ministry confirmed on Tuesday about detection of two new variants of the novel coronavirus other than the Brazilian, the UK and South African in the country.

The variants, N440K and E484Q have been found circulating in a few districts of Maharashtra, Kerala and Telangana.

On Monday, LG Anil Baijal had also stressed upon the adoption of cluster-based surveillance, testing and genome sequencing strategy during a meeting of Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA), which he chaired.