Covid-infected Haryana health minister Anil Vij was on Tuesday evening shifted to Medanta hospital in Gurugram from Rohtak’s Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) owing to the infection in his lungs, an official said.
“The health minister reached Gurugram around 9pm, where he was directly admitted to ICU unit of Medanta. He has been put on high flow oxygen to maintain the oxygen saturation level,” said a senior health official, who accompanied Vij from Rohtak to Gurugram.Another senior doctor from PGIMS, said, “The health minister has been diagnosed with Covid-19 pneumonia, leading to infection in lungs. Due to his deteriorating health condition, it was decided by the PGIMS medical board to shift him to Gurugram.”A senior doctor, who is a part of an expert team monitoring the minister’s health, said Vij did not show any improvement on Tuesday. “The minister, who has comorbidities, initially refused to be moved to Medanta hospital. We then called his brother, who convinced him that the decision was made keeping his health in consideration. We had put him on supplemental oxygen via nasal cannula and also given him plasma therapy. He was administered Remdesivir at the Ambala civil hospital as well. The minister asked us to send him to Gurugram in an ambulance from PGIMS,” the doctor added.
His younger brother Rajender Vij and other members of their family also visited PGIMS.Haryana’s nodal officer for Covid-19 Dr Dhruva Chaudhry, along with other doctors from PGIMS and Medanta, also accompanied the minister.In the morning, Haryana BJP president OP Dhankar had visited Vij and said, “The doctors have given him medicines and he is stable. He will join us very soon.”
Vij had tested positive for Covid-19 on December 5.Last month, Vij had received one shot of a Covid-19 vaccine candidate — Covaxin — which was a part of a two-dose trial. He got the Covid-19 vaccine dose a fortnight before he tested positive for the infection.Meanwhile, Haryana on Tuesday reported 18 more coronavirus deaths, taking the death toll to 2,751, while 822 fresh cases pushed the state’s infection tally to 2,54,207, according to the health department’s daily bulletin. The fresh fatalities included three each from Hisar, Bhiwani and Charkhi Dadri districts, it said. Among the districts which reported a big spike in cases included Gurgaon (195) and Faridabad (173), according to the bulletin.The number of active cases in the state currently stands at 8,232 while the recovery rate is 95.68%, it said.
