Aurangabad, Feb 23 (PTI) The Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) here is gearing up to tackle a possible surge in COVID-19 patients in view of the upward trend in positive cases in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra in the last few days, its dean said on Tuesday.

GMCH Aurangabad dean Dr Kanan Yelikar said the number of critical patients has gone up at the hospital and its infrastructure and human resource are being ramped up.

Addressing a press conference in the GMCH premises, she appealed to citizens to strictly follow COVID-19 guidelines related to face mask, social distancing and hand hygiene.

Yelikar said facilities at the GMCH are being bolstered to deal with any situation.

"The GMCH has a super speciality wing which is dedicated to treatment of COVID-19 patients. We had 78 beds earlier and now this number is being taken up to 100 with the same number of ventilators," the dean said.

"We can handle around 450 patients at a time and we have done that earlier. If patient inflow increases, we can also use the medicine department building to admit and treat infected people," Yelikar said.

A proposal has been cleared to induct more personnel to boost the existing workforce, she said.

The medicine department head, Dr Meenakshi Bhattacharya, said, "There has been a rise in the number of patients. Our facility had around 40 patients earlier and this number has gone up to 120 and half of them are in critical condition."

After reporting less than 50 cases in early February, Aurangabad district has been witnessing a rise in new COVID-19 patients in the last few days.

On Monday, Aurangabad district reported 132 new COVID-19 cases and this tally was 201 on Sunday.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)