Indian Army sets up COVID-19 hospital in Jammu and Kashmir

With the increasing numbers of COVID-19 positive patients across the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, people are finding it difficult to get a hospital bed in state-run hospitals. In this hour of need, the Indian Army has come to the rescue of the administration. They have set up a 250 bed COVID hospital in Srinagar's Rangreth area.

A facility inside the army camp has been established with a capacity of more than 250 beds. The hospital has ICU and HDU facilities available with seven doctors and 35 paramedical staff.

"We at Chinar Corp want to tell the people of Kashmir that we are with you in the fight against the COVID. Whatever is possible, we will do it. We have a state health department with us and we have established this facility with ICU beds, HDU, X-ray and a laboratory. The process of admission is simple. Health services will refer the patients and we will take them in," said S Seth, Brigadier, Indian Army.

Equipped with 20 ICU beds, 20 state-of-art High Dependency Unit beds and 210 post-critical care ward beds, the facility augments government medical health infrastructure significantly.

Around 3500 positive cases of COVID have been reported in the Union Territory every day making it very difficult for the hospitals. However, this step will ease out a lot of pressure on the state health department.

"This hospital is a joint venture between the army and department of health. Almost all hospitals in the UT are full so in this situation, this joint venture is going to ease the pressure from many hospitals. We have an ICU ward with 20 ventilators. Each and every ventilator counts, each bed counts. We are ready to receive the patients," said hospital in-charge Dr Mudasir Ahmad.

The Army had established the same facility last year when the pandemic had started. But at that time only asymptomatic patients were taken into this facility.