In Telangana, uninterrupted ambulance sirens become order of the day

Naveen S Garewal  
Tribune News Service  
Hyderabad, April 21  

In Hyderabad, constant horns of vehicles that usually rend the air have been replaced by a more worrying sound—those of ambulance sirens making their way around the city.

Telangana’s COVID crisis deepens—the state reported 6,542 new Covid-19 new cases during 24-hour—stretching its healthcare to capacity and leaving patients scrambling for hospital beds.

Even the hospitals that admit a patient or two want an advance deposit of up to Rs 5 lakh before the treatment is started.

Lack of oxygen, medicines and apathy have only worsened the situation in the second wave of COVID-19. Telangana has imposed a night curfew from 9 pm to 5 am till May 1, but the road traffic is hardly gone down. The state’s vaccination drive that received a boost during the centrally encouraged ‘Tika Utsav’ has been shut for the past few days with the hospitals having no clue about when they will get the vaccine stocks.

The situation is so bad that the Chief Minister’s daughter, a Nizamabad MLC, has started a helpline of her own. The helpline is receiving about 300 calls each day seeking help in getting hospital beds, medicine like Remidesivir or just an oxygen cylinder. Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR) himself is in isolation after contracting the virus, while most members of the cabinet are seen visiting ‘dargas’ and temples praying for the chief minister. She has certainly shown more leadership compared to others in her father’s cabinet.

The central government’s Cowin portal continues to book appointments for the first and second doses of vaccination at various places in the state even when these vaccination centres are shut. The Apollo Hospital in Secundrabad said that there is a waiting list of one month for anyone wanting a second shot after the vaccine supplies resume. Most hospitals like Virinchi, Century, Care, Star, etc have no vaccine supplies for the past few days.

Telangana has announced a centralised online system to show the availability of beds today and claims to reveal real-time availability of hospital beds in Government and private hospitals across Telangana on the website health.telanagana.gov.in. Surprisingly, data shows only 20 occupied beds in Gandhi Hospital which is the main COVID-19 Hospital, zero bed occupancy in 7 out of 10 COVID hospitals in Hyderabad—contrary to the situation on the ground.

As per the information available here 16,140 COVID positive patients are undergoing treatment at government and private hospitals and there are 27,061 vacant hospital beds across the State. There are 9,838 vacant beds in Government hospitals while 17,223 vacant beds are available in private hospitals.

The past 24 hours have seen 20 deaths, the highest single-day toll in the second wave so far. The state has seen 3,67,901 positives cases and 1,876 deaths so far.