An announcement by the Prime Minister’s Office on Monday, 24 August, stated that the PM-CARES Fund Trust has allocated funds for the fight against COVID-19 by establishing two 500-bed makeshift hospitals each in Bihar's Patna and Muzaffarpur by the Defense Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted from his official handle saying, "This will go a long way in improving COVID care in Bihar." The 500-bed hospital at Patna is being inaugurated on Monday while the other at Muzaffarpur will be opened in the near future.
This announcement comes just ahead of Bihar elections, which are due in October-November.
The PMO also said that these hospitals will have 125 ICU beds with ventilators and 375 normal beds each. "Each bed also has an oxygen supply attached to it. The doctors and paramedical staff will be provided by the Armed Forces Medical Services," Modi tweeted.
Earlier, the government released Rs 3,100 crore from the PM CARES Fund to aid migrant workers and also to purchase ventilators and support India's vaccine development for the deadly coronavirus. However, the bulk of it was spent on procuring ventilators.
Last week, the Supreme Court refused to order the transfer of funds from the PM Cares Fund to the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) saying that these are entirely different funds with different objectives.
At the moment, Bihar has 1.2 lakh COVID-19 cases of which 98,454 patients have been discharged and 610 have died.
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