Even if COVID cases continue to rise, the district ran out of intensive care beds in its 56 state and private hospitals approved to treat COVID patients on Tuesday. The district has 217 intensive care beds for COVID patients.
For the second time this month, Anantapur district exceeded 2,000 cases in a 24-hour period. Of 8,683 samples tested, 2,168 returned positive, with the active case number being 11,755. Of these, 2,116 are being treated in hospitals, 673 in COVID care centers and the rest are in domestic isolation.
The district administration has now notified an additional 73 hospitals to treat COVID patients to meet the ever-increasing demand. Of over 1,100 oxygen-assisted beds, the district only has 119 am to 6 pm on Tuesday and demand is increasing by the minute.
However, the positivity rate, which was over 30% last week, has dropped to 24.97% in the district.
Meanwhile, given recent technical oxygen supply problems that resulted in deaths at the Government General Hospital (GGH) and an oxygen starved hospital in Hindupur, special care has been taken to check the functioning of the liquid medical oxygen tanks at the GGH .
500 bed hospital to come
In the meantime, district collector Gandham Chandrudu visited the site next to the Arjas steel factory on the outskirts of Tadipatri in the district where the state government is planning to build a 500-bed temporary oxygen-assisted hospital.
The factory has its own production capacity of 100 kl oxygen through air separation. The government plans to use this facility to directly supply oxygen to the proposed hospital by June 1st.
They also have three liquid oxygen storage tanks on their factory premises, and even these can be used in emergencies if refills are based on the quota allocated by the Karnataka industry, he said.