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More than ready for any exponential rise: Government

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 12

With Covid-19 cases registering a nine-fold increase in the past 12 days, the government today said it was geared up for an exponential rise in the disease graph with 601 dedicated coronavirus hospitals in place across the country and 1,05,980 isolation beds ready.

Daily testing set to expand with imported kits

ICMR has so far conducted 1,86,906 Covid tests. In the last five days, average daily testing has been 15,757 and average positive samples are 584, which is about 3.70% positivity rate. Government’s focus now is testing, which will increase once the import order of five lakh antibody test kits arrives and is distributed to states for blood sample-based diagnosis.

The Health Ministry allayed fears on the preparedness front, saying health systems were “overprepared and extra cautious” and the available hospital bed strength was much more than what was currently required. Dedicated Covid hospitals across the country have 1.05 lakh isolation beds with oxygen supply functional as of Sunday, whereas the required bed strength to handle the existing cases is 1,689.

40 vaccine trials yet to bring results

ICMR on Sunday said 40 Covid vaccine trials were being carried out worldwide but no results so far.

The case load today surged to 8,447 cases and the death toll rose to 263, registering an increase of 1,000 cases and 34 deaths in a single day. As many as 764 people have also recovered, putting India’s disease discharge rate at 9 per cent. An analysis of Covid trends worldwide has shown that 85 per cent of the confirmed cases will have mild symptoms and will be cured with simple medical management; 20 per cent will need hospitalisation and 5 per cent will need critical care management in the form of ICU support and ventilation. At this rate, 20 per cent of the current 8,447 positive cases in India — 1,689 — will need isolation beds in hospitals. “Even on March 29 when our case load was 979 and the required hospital bed numbers were 196, we had 41,974 beds available in 163 dedicated Covid hospitals. Across states, the hospital bed strength is being raised. Exponential increase can happen in this pandemic and we are overprepared for that,” ministry spokesman Lav Agarwal said today.

The total Covid cases in India increased nine-fold from 979 on March 31 to 8,447 on Sunday night. The ministry records show that the number of dedicated hospitals rose from 163 to 601 over the same period. The Indian military alone has readied 51 dedicated hospitals with 9,000 beds across 10 cities, including Kolkata, Visakhapatnam, Kochi, Dundigal, Bengaluru, Kanpur, Jaisalmer, Jorhat and Gorakhpur.

Central government institutes AIIMS and Safdarjang Hospital in New Delhi have 300 and 500 beds, respectively; four Covid hospitals in Andhra Pradesh have 1,680 beds; Tamil Nadu has one hospital with 350 beds while Kozhikode Government Medical College in Kerala has 950 isolation beds. Dedicated hospitals have also been readied in Ahmedabad (Medicity); Mumbai (Seven Hills); Cuttack (Ashwini Hospital) and Bhubaneshwar (Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences).