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Home isolation keeps pressure on bed availability at bay... for now... dist admin claims to be ready
PUNE The district administration claims to be at the ready to ensure enough of beds are available for Covid-19 patients
PUNE The district administration claims to be at the ready to ensure enough of beds are available for Covid-19 patients.
While there were 1,200 ventilators available for Covid-19 patients on February 19, this number has come down to 652 as of February 23.
With home isolation allowed for Covid-19 patients, patients, asymptomatic or with mild symptoms, are opting for the same, and so the pressure on hospital infrastructure has gone down.
Divisional commissioner Saurabh Rao said, “In view of the increasing cases, the administration will increase beds. We will ensure more beds are reserved. At the current active centres, we have brought down the number of beds at the dedicated Covid care centre’s, dedicated Covid health centres and Covid hospitals, which will be increased when needed.”
Currently, the district has 13,763 beds reserved for Covid-19, of which 652 are with ventilators.
Of these, the 13K-+ beds, 4,498 beds are reserved in the city, while 4,787 are in PCMC.
The remaining are reserved in the Cantonment and rural areas of the district.
Of the 652 ventilators available, 388 are reserved for Pune city.
As of February 19, the district had 51,305 beds, of which, 40,000 were isolation beds without oxygen; 7,069 were beds with oxygen; 2,617 were ICU beds without ventilators; and 1,200 beds were with ventilators.
At least 60% of the isolation beds without oxygen were let go of by the administration, from both private and government hospitals, when the case numbers began to drop in December 2020-January 2021.
On February 19, the number of active cases in the district stood at 8,528 and this number went up to 9,399 by Tuesday evening, as per the state health department. While the number of cases has gone up in these two days, the number of reserved beds has gone down.
