The Andhra Pradesh government has decided to spend on private health infrastructure to support its fight against burgeoning COVID-19 spread. The decision came after a review meeting held on Monday, attended by Chief Minister Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy and other senior officials of the state government.
As the number of positive cases breached the 50,000-mark and deaths stopped short of 700, the state stepped up to take new measures. Most important among them is to financially support private hospitals in upgrading their existing facilities to treat a desired number of COVID-19 patients.
The state will fund the hospitals and nursing homes to acquire more beds, increase oxygen supply facilities, hire more manpower and improve sanitary conditions.
Jawahar Reddy, special chief secretary for health in AP, said, “Private hospitals have been saying that their revenues have fallen and they do not have enough (money) to improve their infrastructure to treat COVID-19 patients. The CM has decided to fund these hospitals as they can be permanent civil infrastructure. The amount spent on them will be recovered at later stages.”
One of the ways the funded amount would be recovered would be to deduct while reimbursing the treatment costs to hospitals who treated poor patients through YSR Aarogyasri scheme.
On Monday evening, a meeting was held with district collectors and instructions were given to submit proposals of private hospitals needing upgradation before the end of the week.
In the last one week, AP has recorded more than 40 per cent of the total deaths, and the health officials said the sudden increase in numbers is due to past deaths being declared now.
The officials have also started identifying newer spots across the districts which is proving to be one of the emerging challenges even as the state aims to ramp up testing to 40,000 tests per day in the coming days.
