An acute shortage of oxygenated beds that had gripped the district in recent weeks has decreased significantly, collector V. Vinay Chand said Wednesday.
“The allocation of beds has been optimized through the real-time managed 104 portal. There are 100 to 150 oxygen beds available at any given time, including some ICU beds available under the Collector’s Quota,” he said.
The county government has already taken over 50% of the beds in all 68 private hospitals reported by COVID and has 17 state hospitals, including 11 rural CHCs under their control.
Currently, over 6,000 beds, including 909 intensive care beds, 3,132 oxygenated beds and 1,955 non-oxygenated beds, are under the control of the district collector.
All of these beds are located under Aarogyasri and no hospital can refuse admission as a team of senior executives such as RDO, DMHO and the director of Aarogyasri visited all private hospitals and physically took over the beds intended for Aarogyasri. The data is fed into the 104 portal in real time and all one has to do is call 104 and a bed will be allocated, said Mr Vinay Chand.
Additionally, the district has seen an encouraging number of discharges in the past few days, which is also a major reason for bed availability.
The collector agreed that there were problems with the allocation of beds until a week ago, and said the situation improved after the beds were integrated into the 104 hotline. “I haven’t received any calls in the past week asking to be admitted to the hospital. This is an indication that things are getting better. Apart from about 6,000 beds that are under government control, the rest are open to payment, which in turn is regulated by civil servants. These beds are also allocated via portal 104, ”he said.
He also said that aside from 909 ICU beds and 3,132 oxygenated beds, the remaining 1,955 regular beds can be connected to oxygen cylinders or Type B or D concentrators.
Capacity expansion
“The district administration will add 500 beds to the makeshift hospital being built by the Visakhapatnam Steel Mill. 50 beds are currently ready and the remaining 450 will be ready by mid-June. All beds will be connected to gaseous oxygen from the plant and VSP will also provide medical assistance. The district administration will provide workers. We will use the services of medical students as the government has already approved the use of home surgeons, ”said the collector.
Apart from that, 300 beds at KGH in the Bhavanagar and Rajendra Prasad wards were taken over for COVID treatment and have started work in addition to the existing CSR block.
Forty beds in the RCD and 90 in the psychiatric hospital have been prepared and will increase the bed strength in the next few days. We are also increasing the bed size on VIMS from 400 to 500, and in a week the bed size will increase from 6,016 to at least 6,600.
Mr. Vinay Chand also informed The Hindu that two air-conditioned German hangars with 75 beds each, some of which are connected to the oxygen and intensive care units of the KGH, will go into operation in one week. These act as emergency or triage centers.
Recoveries are more numerous than new cases
Up to 2,014 people being treated for COVID-19 have recovered in the past 24 hours on Wednesday morning, while 1,800 new cases were reported in the district over the same period.
With the new cases, the district’s total cases rose to 1.32,496 as of Wednesday.
The death toll also rose to 863 when eight more people succumbed to the virus. The total number of deaths reported this month stands at 252.
The total number of recoveries rose to 1.12.705. Almost 17,000 people affected by COVID-19 have recovered since May 18. In the past two to three days, the number of active cases has decreased slightly. The number of active cases was 18,928.