(PICTURES) Sri Lanka's largest Army-improvised COVID-19 Hospital to be ready soon

Army Commander Supervises Final Touches at Army-improvised Largest COVID-19 Hospital

COLOMBO (News 1st); In order to find whether the country's largest Army-improvised COVID-19 Hospital in Seeduwa, now receiving final touches needs any more fine-tuning, General Shavendra Silva, Head of the National Operation Centre for Prevention of COVID-19 Outbreak (NOCPCO), Chief of Defence Staff and Commander of the Army, together with several Senior Officers of relevance to the project undertook an inspection tour on Saturday (8).

The Army-improvised COVID-19 Hospital in Seeduwa, fully backed by the Army Seva Vanitha Unit (ASVU) with 1200 beds, equipped with all vital health facilities, is the first-ever biggest COVID-19 Hospital in the country, improvised by the Army in less than a week to be in line with the government's decision to increase the bed-capacity all over the country. "In keeping with this emergency need, the Army immediately initiated an island-wide hunt for suitable locations and buildings and as a result, Security Force members at all regional levels are busy improvising new places to serve as Intermediate Care Centres or Hospitals, exclusively reserved for COVID-19 treatment as existing capacities in government hospitals are already overwhelmed. We expect to open this state-of-the art facility centre shortly in Seeduwa with the express objective of giving the best emergency healthcare to affected Sri Lankans free of charge," General Shavendra Silva remarked. The state-of-the art facility with emergency treatment unit, isolation sections, resuscitation units, ICU, medical stores, etc is the first of its kind in Sri Lanka that came up in less than a week on an initiative taken by the Army to face with any contingency in the wake of resurgence of the 3rd COVID-19 wave in the country. This improvised new COVID-19 hospital in Seeduwa has been equipped with Army-produced 1200 beds and we will primarily have 5000 beds ready, and the target is to increase it to 10,000 beds around the country within the next couple of days. In this place, isolated medical facilities with separate cubicles and space could cope with 1200 patients on an emergency basis. The military has already added more beds to the hospital capacity, intermediate care centres and provided even ICU beds, having established the ICUs by the Army itself. Out of some 86,000 beds in island-wide state hospitals, initially we used only about 5000 beds since capacity for contingencies like COVID-19 is minimal, General Shavendra Silva was quoted saying.