Srinagar: As COVID-19 enters its tenth month in Kashmir and has shown signs of retreat, various Indoor Patient Departments (IPD) at SKIMS Medical College Hospital will resume routine work from Friday this week.
The IPD will start functioning from Friday and the surgical emergencies will be allowed to get admitted from Tuesday next week, said Dr Shafa Deva, Medical Superintendent at SKIMS hospital Bemina.
The Outdoor Patient Department (OPD) had started functioning from November last year.
The hospital was designated as a ‘COVID-19 only facility’ in March last year and had completely stopped admitting any cases except those of COVID-19. “We were declared as COVID-19 hospital by the government,” Deva said.
Soon, the hospital was flooded with COVID-19 patients. “Till now we have catered to 1541 COVID-19 patients,” said Deva.
On Monday this week, the hospital authorities discharged the final COVID-19 patient.
The non COVID-19 departments at the hospital have a large clientele, said Deva. “Many people went to the Divisional Commissioner for making the hospital accessible again,” she added.
The hospital as per Deva has all the medical departments including general medicines, psychiatry, dermatology, ophthalmology, ENT, orthopedics and pediatrics, which will start functioning again after being sanitised.
However, patients will not be allowed into the hospital without wearing masks and maintaining social distancing. “We have kept sanitizers available for patients everywhere,” she said.
