Apollo Hospitals announced the launch of a comprehensive and integrated response plan to take the battle to COVID-19. The announcement was made at a virtual media conference held online with the top management from Chennai and Hyderabad addressing the press across the country. The project is titled ‘Project Kavach’, which means ‘shield’.

The 3800 Apollo pharmacies across 18 states will be pressed into action to serve people with all the medication, consumables and supplements as required. Stocks have been doubled, prices will be strictly monitored and controlled, and home delivery capability has been enhanced. It is estimated that the capacity can be ramped up from the 500,000 people served on a daily basis to 1 million if required.

“Project Stay I” is an innovative strategy to create medical rooms in hotels/hostels with light medical supervision for quarantine and creating a barrier before people come into the hospitals. This would address the situation where over 50% of the cases need only isolation and paracetamol. These medical rooms will be rolled out in the following cities – Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bangalore and Delhi, starting with approximately 50 in each city, going up by 50 rooms every three days, to reach an eventual target of 5000 rooms across the country. These will be calibrated as per the need.

With “Project Stay-I” they expect to help over 10000-15000 patients in a month and prevent over 50 lakh infections.

Education is the key to appropriate action. The free online COVID-19 course has already trained over 50,000 individuals. The corporate education on safe working environment was used by 250+ corporate organizations.

In locations such as Andhra Pradesh, Bhubaneshwar where the government has set aside separate hospitals for COVID care, Apollo is assisting them by managing a certain number of beds within large government hospitals.

Apollo Hospitals with its network of 70 hospitals also has the largest number of isolation and ICU facilities in the private sector. There will be over 250 beds which can be enhanced to 500 beds, created only to treat the critically ill at any given time.

To prepare for this, Apollo Hospitals has undertaken training of all the personnel on the latest treatment protocols adequate personnel have been pressed into service with provision for quarantine quarters to house those staff separately, medicines, consumables, hospital supplies, negative pressure rooms, ventilator and additional medical equipment has been procured or reserved with vendors to meet any increase in demand.