Srinagar, Jul 28 (PTI) The Jammu and Kashmir administration on Tuesday instituted a system of referrals for admission of COVID-19 patients in designated tertiary health care institutions.

“In exercise of powers conferred under Section 24 of the Disaster Management Act, 2005, and in reiteration of departmental instructions on the subject, the State Executive Committee (SEC) hereby issues the following instructions for strict compliance by the concerned authorities with immediate effect," an order said.

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The hospitals which have been designated as tertiary care institutions in respect of COVID-19 include SKIMS hospital Soura, SMHS hospital, Chest Diseases Hospital and SKIMS Medical College & Hospital Bemina in Srinagar City of Kashmir division and GMC, Jammu; CD Hospital, Jammu and ASCOMS (Batra) in Jammu division.

According to the order, all COVID-19 patients with mild to moderate symptoms shall first be admitted in Category-II or category-III hospitals, at sub-district or district level, or any other hospital which is not a category-I referral hospital.

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"Such patients shall not be directly admitted to any category-I referral hospital mentioned above. Those patients shall be admitted and treated in Category-I referral hospitals only if they are duly referred by a concerned district level hospital or a non-category-I referral hospital. This will be ensured by all the Chief Medical Officers and supervised by the Deputy Commissioners concerned," it said.

The heads of the tertiary care institutions or category-I referral hospitals shall not deviate from these instructions without the knowledge of Divisional Commissioner concerned, it said.

"Any deviation shall attract penal action," the order added.

The order comes in the wake of rising number of COVID-19 cases in the Union territory. While the total number of cases has almost reached the 19,000-mark, the number of active cases is over 7,600.

(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)