Covid patients on ICU beds in Telangana outnumber other states

Hyderabad: The daily Covid-19 cases in Telangana state may be on a slide, much on the lines predicted last week by the state health department and the government, but the number of people battling for their lives, be in the ICUs of various government and private hospitals in the state, or on supplementary oxygen, paints a grim picture of the actual situation on the ground.

One in six of all Covid-19 patients in a critical condition in India were in Telangana state as on Sunday evening, while one in nine in the country requiring supplementary were also from the state.

It was just a day ago that Union minister of health Dr Harshvardhan said that 1.34 per cent of the active caseload in the country was in intensive care units, and 3.70 per cent of them are on oxygen support. As per the latest active caseload available at the time of writing this report on Sunday evening, these figures translate to 50,071 patients in ICU beds, and 1,38,255 oxygen beds.

With 8,344 patients in ICUs in the state, and another 14,285 on oxygen beds, the revelation by Dr Harshvardhan translates into one in six Covid-19 patients in the country’s ICUs and one in nine on oxygen beds, being in Telangana state.

Such is the pressure on ICU and oxygen beds in Telangana from Covid-19 patients, that as per the live bed availability status on the Telangana state health department website, all 851 ICU beds dedicated to Covid-19 patients at Gandhi, Chest, King Koti, Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (Nims), and Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences, were full. Of the 1,984 oxygen beds at these hospitals, as many as 1,579 were occupied as of 8 pm on Sunday.

However, the ‘live’ bed status available at https://health.telangana.gov.in/ does not appear to be reliable and up to date as the last updated time for each hospital, whether government or private, are all over the chart, with some individual hospital last known updates being more than six hours old.