Udhampur: Northern Command is gearing up for the fight against COVID-19 by catering to the needs of the serving personnel, Ex-Servicemen, Veer Naris and their dependants who are deployed or residing in the UTs of J&K and Ladakh. It has also joined hands with the Civil Administration in building the capacities as a pre-emptive effort anticipating that severity of spread of COVID might go up in the next one month or so.
Starting from ramping up its organic assets in terms of holding capacity of COVID patients, oxygen availability, number of ICU beds, vaccination of serving and retired personnel and Veer Naris and establishment of four COVID Care Centres with almost 490 bed capacity for the Awaam, an official release here said.
Northern Command is ensuring the twin objectives of “Force Preservation” and “Optimised Utilisation of Medical Resources” for the benefit of serving, retired, their dependants as well as Awaam in far flung areas. In addition to these, Army units are undertaking massive awareness drives, providing transportation support for move of medical supplies and any other aspect on which the UT administration or civil organisations are seeking assistance of the Army.
The Army and the Government have jointly activated COVID facilities for the people of J&K anticipating the pandemic to continue unabated for some time. These facilities include 250 bedded COVID Care centre at Rangreth in Srinagar, 200 bedded facility at Damana near Jammu and 20 bedded facilities each at Uri and Baramulla.
The Army is also carrying out awareness campaigns for local population sensitising them about COVID protocols, action to be taken by the affected people and importance of getting vaccinated. Veterans, Veer Naris and dependants of service personnel are being provided assistance through a network of helplines located in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh regions in guiding the Ex Servicemen for getting themselves registered for vaccination. Nodal officers and COVID helplines are operating on 24×7 basis to reach out to Ex Servicemen and Veer Naris reassuring them and assisting them pro-actively thereby resolving a large number of their problems on a daily basis.
