Delhi's Mount Carmel School beomes first private school to set up COVID care centre 

In a first, a prominent private school in the national capital has been converted into a 100-bed dedicated COVID care centre.

Set up at Mount Carmel School in southwest Delhi's Dwarka, The Vijay Williams COVID Care Centre has a team of 75 volunteers, including doctors, nurses and paramedics, said school dean Michael Williams, who recovered from COVID-19 days ago and has lost family members to the viral disease, on Monday. "Almost six weeks ago, our group of church friends started planning this.

Almost 100 churches across Delhi have come together for this," Williams said. While many government schools are functioning as vaccination and COVID care centres, this is probably the first instance of a private school taking such an initiative. All beds at the centre are equipped with oxygen concentrators and cylinders. The school's oxygen generation plant is also likely to be functional within a week's time, Williams said. The plant will be able to fill 1,500 cylinders with a capacity of 100 litres each, he said.

Williams said the centre will admit coronavirus patients whose condition is not very serious. "We will cater to those patients whose oxygen levels can be maintained above 90 with oxygen and will be giving them all medicines and steroids. We have also tied up with a local diagnostic lab to help in platelet count and blood sugar testing," he said. The COVID centre has been named after Williams' father, who succumbed to the disease on Sunday. "I recovered from the infection two days ago. I even lost my younger brother to the virus a few months back. My mother is still battling the disease.

The centre has been named as 'The Vijay Williams COVID Care Centre' as a tribute to my father," Williams said. Williams' sister Joanna Gokavi and brother-in-law Sunil Gokavi are both doctors and will be working at the centre. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who visited the centre, said, "We may be able to link this COVID care centre with to one of our big hospitals in the city after assessing the needs and requirements of the centre." "This Covid centre, started under the aegis of Mount Carmel School Society, is a mark of humanity and generosity.

The availability of beds and other facilities gives us confidence that we have the resources to fight this deadly crisis," he said. Sisodia further said, "We are seeing that nations across the world are experiencing one of the worst crises ever. The period from April 22 to May 5 was the most challenging for Delhi. We recorded the highest number of cases and the city had a staggering infection rate." "We responded immediately by increasing hospital beds in the city. However, the scarcity of oxygen has been one of the most challenging problems we have faced. The decreasing positivity rate shows that we are slowly coming out of the crisis and all the credit goes to the doctors and the corona warriors," he said. Delhi's COVID-19 caseload stands at 13,36218 while the disease has claimed 19,663 lives so far, according to official data.