India is thoroughly prepared to battle the onslaught of Covid-19 pandemic, said the Centre on Sunday. The ministry of health and family welfare released statistics on the number of isolation beds across the country.
The ministry statistics showed India has used 1.5% of the isolation beds available across 601 hospitals. At present, there are 105,980 isolation beds. According to the ministry, at 4 pm on Sunday, the number of positive patients was 8,356. “As per our statistics, about 20% of the positive patients need to be hospitalised and the remaining 80% have mild symptoms.
Based on this, of 8,356 patients, about 1,671 would need to be admitted in intensive care or critical care units. At present, there are 105,980 beds,” said joint secretary (health) Lav Agarwal. “We are thoroughly prepared.”
Claiming that India has been ahead of the curve, the ministry said on Friday that as many as 1,282 patients needed critical care against the available 104,613 isolation beds.
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“The number of hospitals with isolation beds and Covid-19 treatment facility have also increased steadily from 163 on March 29 to 601 on Sunday,” said Agarwal.
Even as the number of cases increased despite the lockdown, the ministry said the number of recoveries have also been high at 716. The recovery number increased steadily from 87 on March 29 to 642 on Saturday. Agarwal said: “Our main focus has been the treatment of positive patients and ramping up testing facilities.”
The Indian Council of Medical Research has increased the number of samples being tested. Over the last five days, on average, 15,747 samples per day have been tested. So far, 1.86 lakh samples have been tested and approximately 4.3% have tested positive.
To augment testing capacity in all government and private medical colleges on an urgent basis, the Centre will distribute the responsibility evenly across various eminent institutions. They are expected to serve as mentors of the medical colleges in their allotted area and facilitate the establishment of testing facilities in the states.
Source: The Economic Times
