BENGALURU: A central team of doctors deputed by the ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) which concluded its Karnataka visit on Thursday said that the quarantine facilities at Victoria hospital in Bengaluru and the one in Surathkal are model practices that can be emulated in other parts of the country.Pankaj Kumar Pandey, commissioner, Karnataka department of health and family welfare, said: “The team declared that the Victoria Hospital and Surathkal quarantine facilities were model practices to be followed. They also made suggestions on medium and long term measures like strengthening human resources at health institutions, training, and mass counseling.”Aside from this, the team deemed the Mysuru screening facility as “excellent and declared that the ‘Critical Care Support Team Initiative’ should be emulated by other states.”The agenda of the team was to assess the State’s Covid-19 response and provide required assistance. The team comprised Avdhesh Kumar , additional director, National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme; RK Gupta, consultant physician, Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital; Nishant Kumar, professor, anaesthesia, Lady Hardinge Medical College , and Anuradha Shulania, associate professor, microbiology, Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.The team visited health facilities and institutions across Karnataka in the past week, interacting with local and state health officials in the districts of Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mandya, Chikkaballapura , Hassan and Dakshina Kannada “The central team held discussions on the State’s preparedness and reviewed the establishment of a designated structure of institutions to serve Covid-19 patients through fever clinics, exclusive Covid care centers and swab collection facilities at taluka and district levels,” Pandey said.He added that the team was apprised of the measures put in place to strengthen universal surveillance using available databases on TB, HIV patients and other vulnerable patients.“The team was informed that the per day testing capacity was being increased successfully, and that technology, along with the involvement of private health facilities was being effectively used to increase outreach” said Jawaid Akthar, additional chief secretary, department of health and family welfare.Pandey said that in Bengaluru, the team visited health facilities including fever clinics and Victoria Hospital. The team also visited institutions such as Nimhans, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases and the National Institute of Virology, Bengaluru“They were updated on various innovations of the state government to strengthen health systems and surveillance, including the critical care support team and tele-ICU unit, the BBMP war room and the media bulletin room. During their travel to other districts, the central team visited fever clinics, quarantine and isolation wards of district and taluka-hospitals, as well as microbiology labs,” Pandey added.