Form task force to tackle third Covid wave, BSY tells officials

Bengaluru Karnataka chief minister BS Yediyurappa on Monday directed his officials to prepare for an imminent third wave of Covid-19 infections and ordered the formation of a task force for the same

Bengaluru Karnataka chief minister BS Yediyurappa on Monday directed his officials to prepare for an imminent third wave of Covid-19 infections and ordered the formation of a task force for the same.

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In a meeting held with officials on Monday evening at his residence “Cauvery” in Bengaluru, Yediyurappa took stock of the pandemic situation and response in the state.

“We should be prepared for the third wave from now on itself,” according to a statement from the chief minister’s office (CMO), attributing it to Yediyurappa.

The statement comes at a time when the Karnataka government is struggling to get a grip on the ongoing second wave of infections in the southern state and its capital, Bengaluru.

The Karnataka government has been accused of ignoring warnings by the state-appointed technical advisory committee (TAC) in November on the imminent second wave and the required preparedness to deal with the same.

Karnataka registered 39,305 new infections that takes its active caseload to 571,006. Positivity rate was at 31.66% while fatality rate stood at 1.51%, according to the daily bulletin of the state health department on Monday.

Bengaluru saw a slight decrease in cases as the city reported 16,747 new infections, which some senior officials said was a sign of its plateauing. However, Bengaluru accounted for 374 out of the total 596 fatalities in the state.

The situation in other districts of the state continues to deteriorate as they are yet to peak, according to officials.

Chitradurga, with 172 cases was the lowest in the state while Tumakuru, about 70 kms from Bengaluru, was the highest with 2168, according to the daily bulletin of the state health

department.

Meanwhile, the number of fatalities too have seen a spike in these districts. There were 26 fatalities in Ballari, 22 in Hassan, 12 each in Haveri and Mandya, 15 each in Tumakuru and Bagalkote, 11 each in Shivamogga and Uttara Kannada. Only one district, Koppal, registered no deaths on Monday, according to the bulletin, that shows the severity of the spread and its impact on those infected.

Though Karnataka has claimed acute shortage of oxygen, a senior government official has said that the supplies were more than the requirement.

“The actual oxygen demand and requirement is more than the supplies: hence, therefore, at present, allocation can only be issued as per actual supplies,” according to Munish Moudgil, the state nodal officer for oxygen distribution.

Karnataka had earlier estimated that it has a requirement of over 1700 MT of oxygen while the centre had allocated only 965 MT.

CN Ashwath Naryan, deputy chief minister and head of the state’s Covid task force directed officials to immediately integrate the real time data of the supply of oxygen, anti-viral drug Remdesivir and bed allocated under government quota in private hospitals to SAST portal.

“The above data should be made to be displayed in the SAST portal on a real time basis. This will enable us to know who needs what and to whom the supplied things are reaching on a real time basis. Ultimately this would result in streamlining the COVID services management,” he said in a statement on Monday.

For Bengaluru, he said that there was a demand of around 7000 hospital beds.

“To put a check on those who get unnecessarily hospitalized, triaging of these bed seekers will be done in 60 L-1 (includes maternity homes, medical colleges, and covid care centers,) and L-2 (PHCs) centers. After triaging the number of beds really needed may reduce to around 2500. Now the government is providing 1000 beds apart from the beds reserved in private hospitals. So, for Bengaluru city every day 2500 beds can be made available,” he said.

The state government has also decided to procure 2,00,000 Pulse Oximeters and out of this 25,000 will be procured immediately in the first phase.