CHENNAI: Health Minister C Vijayabhaskar on Monday threatened the arrest of former Doordarshan news reader and serial actor T V Varadarajan for allegedly spreading ‘false news’ on hospital beds being unavailable.
Earlier, Varadarajan had released a video on social media alleging that an acquaintance tested positive for COVID-19 and was unable to find a hospital bed, even after making calls to top officials. He told people to stay safe at home in light of this.
Responding to this, Vijayabhaskar said the newsreader was spreading false news and threatened his arrest under the Epidemic Act.
“In Chennai alone, we have 5,000 beds in five goverment hospitals with ventilator capacity. Chennai Corporation has a capacity of 17,000 in COVID care centres. There are 75,000 beds across the state totally,’’ the Health Minister said, urging people not to spread rumours without proof.
The Minister said that the recovery rate is 56 percent and currently only six people are on ventilators in the state. “It is the doctor’s decision to admit a patient in the ICU ward. We can’t admit everyone and it is only based on conditions,’’ the Health Minister said.
He said that earlier 99 percent cases were asymptomatic and now 84 percent are asymptomatic. "Some people have ten days of symptoms and then recover. Some just recover within a few days," he said.
However, on the contrary, when The New Indian Express on Monday morning checked the bed status at the government’s official website stopcoronatn.in, general wards and ICU in major private hospitals in the city were nearly full. But subsequently the website did not open.
Officials at KMC and Stanley Hospital said beds for COVID-19 patients were almost fully occupied, whereas in Omandurar, 160 beds are available out of the total capacity of 500.
“In KMC, the bed capacity is 400 and it's almost full,” said an official with the hospital.
Officials with Stanley said that only eight beds are available while close to 800 beds are occupied. “We are sending stable patients to COVID care centres,” the official added.
Actress Kasturi Shankar tweeted about an instance of a woman unable to find a hospital bed recently while journalist Sumanth Raman too had tweeted on the unavailability of beds.
"For those who think they can buy their way to a bed, remember, even if you have money, there aren’t beds," tweeted Raman.