Gandhinagar, Jul 18 (IANS): The Gujarat government has announced that to meet the need for medical staff for the treatment of Covid-19 patients, medical students will be roped in as assistants.

The Gujarat government has observed that looking at the Covid-19 situation in the state, there could be a scarcity of medical staff in the coming days. To cope with this situation, the students studying in government medical and paramedical colleges, the Gujarat Medical Education and Research Society (GMERS) medical colleges, self financed medical colleges and grant-in-aid institutions can be roped in for government healthcare services, the government announced on Friday.

The first year, second and third year MBBS, BDS, BAMS, BHMS, physiotherapist, BSc nursing, GNM and students in the final year of various branches of medicine can be trained and deployed under the concerned officials as assistants.

For this, the students will be trained for a period of 3 days to 5 days according to the streams they are studying in. They will be trained in clinical management of Covid-19 infection, prevention and control, field surveillance and supervision, isolation and quarantine, psychological and social care, critical care assistance etc.

These students will be used in medical and paramedical services like preventive care, clinical care, logistics and other work like health and medical data management, data analysis and tele-counselling on the government's 1100 and 104 helplines.

This medical staff problem was pointed out by Niti Aayog member Vinod Pal, part of the four-member team which visited Gujarat to review the Covid-19 situation in the state.

After almost 4 months of the outbreak, the daily number of coronavirus cases is increasing and has reached almost 1,000 cases every day. Gujarat has crossed the 46,500 mark in Covid-19 cases.