Pune to have 450 ventilator beds to deal with rising cases: Civic chief Shekhar Gaikwad
Private hospitals have enough ventilator beds which have not been acquired as of yet, however, the civic body will acquire them in a phased manner, he says
Pune municipal commissioner Shekhar Gaikwad on Wednesday said that the civic administration will increase its ventilator beds capacity to deal with critical patients. “A total of 450 ventilator beds would be available within the next two-three weeks. Private hospitals have enough ventilator beds which have not been acquired as of yet, however, the civic body will acquire them in a phased manner,” said Gaikwad.
Pune Smart City Development Corporation Limited and Pune Municipal Corporation published their report for Covid-19 data between June 19 and June 30 and projected a shortage of ventilators and ICU beds by the end of July. As per the report, Pune will face a shortage of 202 ventilator beds and 400 ICU beds.
The report also projected the Covid-19 cases for July and the civic infrastructure readiness to handle the situation. Pune is projected to have 47,796 Covid-19 positive cases by the end of July, of which 19,596 will be active cases. Currently, Pune has a total bed capacity of 18,556, which includes private bed acquired or reserved by PMC. Hence, there will be an acute shortage of beds.
The number of ventilators is also a concern for the civic body as currently there are only 288 and by the end of July, the number would be in the negative zone.
Considering the report, mayor Murlidhar Mohol held a meeting with the civic chief, IAS officer Saurabh Rao and additional commissioners on Wednesday evening. “The situation will become critical for us by July-end, however, we have time to boost our infrastructure,” said Mohol.
“I have instructed the civic administration to acquire maximum beds from private hospitals and the commissioner will soon issue an order for it,” he added.
The civic chief said, “We got 21 ventilators from the PM Cares fund. As the PMC did not have enough medical staff, we handed over these 21 ventilators to the Sassoon General Hospital. I am planning to increase ventilators at Sassoon to 50 by this week. I will issue the order to acquire more private hospitals bed soon.”
Commissioner said that the civic body was preparing for a critical situation and plan to increase the infrastructure as per requirement.
The doubling rate of total positive cases in the city is 17.98 and PMC has already crossed the 18,000 positive numbers. “The cases were expected to rise with the unlocking process. For symptomatic patients, we have enough infrastructure. We need to care mainly for critical patients and mainly, the patients who require ventilator support,” added Gaikwad.
Advocate Vijaysinh Thomare said, “My personal experience is that patients are not allotted beds easily in private hospitals. One of our colleagues tested Covid-19 positive and she had to go through two-three hospitals in order to finally get admitted.”