Final year medics, nurses to be roped in to fight Covid

The Centre has decided to rope in final year medical and nursing students for Covid-19 duty to overcome staff shortage. Hospitals have been working at half the capacity after several healthcare workers contracted the virus.

The decision was taken during a review meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi held to augment human resources for effective Covid-19 management. Government hospitals and healthcare federations had flagged to the government that hospitals were overwhelmed by patient load and staff falling sick during the second wave.

The government is planning to give incentives to medical and nursing students who join hospitals on Covid-19 duty. They include financial incentive and preference in government jobs after graduation through a credit system.


“Decisions may include delaying Neet and incentivising MBBS pass-outs studying for it to join Covid-19 duty. The decisions may also include utilising services of final year MBBS and nursing students in Covid-19 duty. Those medical personnel doing Covid-19 duty will be given preference in government recruitment as well as a financial incentive,” a senior government official said.

ET had reported in its Saturday edition how healthcare professionals have warned the government that there might be a shortage of doctors and other frontline workers at the peak of the second wave in May. Hospitals are already reporting 8-10 cases of staff members getting infected daily. As healthcare and frontline workers are vaccinated, they are not getting severe disease but even with mild and moderate symptoms, they take 14-21 days to return to duty. With second wave reporting very high Covid-19 positive numbers, the hospitals are unable to divide their staff in groups so that they can protect them.