Hyderabad: Growing cases make ventilator beds scarce

Hyderabad: The Covid-19 situation in Telangana may go worse in the coming days as the positive cases continue to surge. With government and private hospitals, isolation centres have no room to accommodate new patients, the wait for the patients is getting longer.

About 4,000 ventilator beds are available in government and private hospitals. Among the government, Gandhi Hospital has 600 hundred ventilators beds and the Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences has around 300 ventilator beds but the hospitals are unable to facilitate the patients and are not sufficient to meet the current demand.

Though both are dedicated hospitals to treat Covid-19 patients, patients have to wait for hours to get the ventilator beds. Many of the patients are dying in ambulances or at homes while waiting to get a ventilator bed. Two such instances came to light on Saturday in which patients died at home while family members were in search of a ventilator bed.

There are about 40,000 beds available in the State for positive patients, but the active cases are more than 80,000. The government has announced increasing beds up to 60,000 but the work is still not completed. Attendant of a patient of Tolichowki said, "my grandfather was in serious condition and needed a ventilator. We enquired with all major government hospitals having Covid-19 treatment such TIMS, NIMS, Gandhi and Chest hospital, but we did not find a single bed while the government is claiming that there is no shortage of any kind of beds. Even we did not find it in a private hospital either. Meanwhile my grandfather expired."

In a similar instance on Sunday, a patient from Vattepally suffering from low oxygen levels went into critical condition as he was taken to various hospitals for admission but denied. He got the bed at a private hospital after four long hours, he was in critical condition when last heard.

People also complain about a real-time bed locator portal started by the government to help people find beds but the portal is said to be not of any help and failed to provide accurate information.

Doctors, who are treating Covid patients, warned that the situation may go even worse if people don't change their behaviour. Dr Javed Ali of Chest Hospital said "despite the spike in Covid-19 case things are normal and no protocols are being followed by the public."