The protruding front portion of the new Mumbai-Gandhinagar Vande Bharat Express train — which was damaged due to a cattle hit on Thursday — got a new ‘nose’ at the Coach Care Centre of the Western Railway, here on Friday, an official said.

The nose, made of FRP (fibre reinforced plastic) suffered an ugly rip-off as three-four buffaloes were run over between Vatva-Maninagar, near Ahmedabad, around 11.15 a.m., delaying the train by 10 minutes.

However, even on Friday, the train with the new nose on the way to Gujarat suffered another similar accident with the front portion suffering a dent near Anand.

After the accident on Thursday, the train travelled between the two cities without the frontal portion and was sent to the repair workshop on Friday.

“The nose cone cover of the train’s driver coach along with its mounting brackets was damaged in the cattle-hit incident…. The vital parts of the train remained unaffected. The damaged nose cone was replaced at Mumbai Central,” said Western Railway chief spokesperson Sumit Thakur.

He explained that the nose cover is designed to absorb the impact without transmitting the same to the functional parts of the train, so it is sacrificial by design and replaceable.

The damaged nose cone — of which the Western Railway has sufficient spares — was quickly replaced during the maintenance and the train deployed back into service without delays.

It departed from Mumbai Central for Gandhinagar but en route suffered another minor mishap which dented the newly-installed nose, which will be set right, said Thakur.

It may be recalled that the indigenously-designed and manufactured semi-high speed train was flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 30 and is the third service under the Vande Bharat series, with a capacity to attain up to 200 kmph speeds in future.

India reported 1,997 fresh Covid cases in the last 24 hours against 2,529 recorded earlier, said the Union Health Ministry on Friday.

In the same period, the country recorded nine Covid related deaths, taking the national toll to 5,28,754 as per the report.

Meanwhile, the active caseload presently stands at 30,362 cases, accounting for 0.07 per cent of the country’s total positive cases.

The recovery of 3,908 patients in the last 24 hours took the cumulative tally to 4,40,47,344. Consequently, India’s recovery rate stands at 98.75 per cent.

Meanwhile, India’s daily positivity rate has been reported to be 0.94 per cent, while the weekly positivity rate currently stands at 1.34 per cent.

Also in the same period, a total of 2,13,123 tests were conducted across the country, increasing the overall tally to over 89.64 crore.

As of Friday morning, India’s Covid-19 vaccination coverage exceeded 218.88 crore.

Over 4.10 crore adolescents have been administered with a first dose of Covid jab since the beginning of vaccination drive for this age bracket.

MUMBAI: The surgery department at the state-run JJ Hospital and Grant Medical College is undergoing a huge overhaul. Three of the operation theatres will be converted into modular ones, with 34 additional beds for recovering patients which will allow them to reduce the waiting list of patients awaiting surgeries by half. This plan also includes a state-of-the-art audio-visual (AV) room where surgeries in the OTs can be transmitted live for students to watch.
The state government has released funds of more than ₹30 crores for this overhaul. Work on all these units is underway, and they are expected to be operational in the next six to eight months. Three of the existing modular OTs were set up with funds received under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY) in 2008.

“Three of the six OTs of our department are already modular. Now, we will be integrating the other three as modular OTs. Both the surgical ICU (SICU) and recovery rooms will have 17 beds each,” said the head of the surgery Dr Ajay Bhandarwar.

Once the patients have undergone surgeries, they can be shifted to the SICU or the recovery room based on how severe their condition is, he added.

Currently, the department only has access to two beds in the critical care unit where other critical patients from super speciality and other departments of the hospital are also admitted during recovery.

“Since there aren’t enough beds for recuperating patients for post-operative care, many surgeries need to be delayed. The wait for elective surgeries can be as long as one month because of this. The new infrastructure would help us cut down this wait to one or two weeks,” said the associate professor in the department Dr Amol Wagh.

The number of resident doctors posted in the surgery department has increased from 27 to 32 this year. These additional residents can easily be posted in the SICU where they can learn critical care management, which is an essential part of their post-graduate studies, said Dr Bhandarwar. These new OTs as well as the existing ones would also be equipped with fibre optic cabling, which would connect them directly to the AV room. “Due to fear of infection, we usually don’t allow too many people in the OTs during an operation. The surgeries being conducted here can be transmitted to the OTs as well as other teaching hospitals which have the necessary infrastructure,” said Dr Bhandarwar.

Dr Wagh said the department can conduct around ten elective surgeries, over and above the emergency surgeries every day. Some of these are day surgeries in which the patients can be discharged on the same day, but in most cases, they require post-operative care. With more room for recovering patients, there would be a chance to conduct more surgeries as well.