NEW DELHI: The Centre on Sunday sought to assure that as the country is dealing with an infectious pandemic, the number of the cases may rise to an exponential but the government is adequately prepared for the management of novel corona virus cases.
Addressing the daily press briefing, Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said, "this is a pandemic and numbers can be exponential. Our effort is to take advanced steps."
So far, a total of 8,356 positive cases have been reported in the country of which 909 new cases and 34 deaths have been recorded in 24 hours. The total deaths due to the infection stands at 273.
Elaborating on the level of preparedness, Agarwal said that on March 29, there were 979 positive cases and 20 per cent of these cases, or 196, needed critical care and oxygen.
“That time, 41,900 dedicated COVID beds were available in 163 state-run hospitals. On April 4, when we required 580 beds, we had 67,500 beds, on April 9, 1,100 beds were required but there were 8,5000 beds available in the country,” he said.
"The total number of the cases has increased and we have 8,356 positive cases, of these 20 per cent cases need ICU support, that means today 1,671 patients need oxygen support and critical care treatment and we have 1,05,000 dedicated Covid beds available in the country in 601 hospitals,” Agarwal added.
“This figure is important to show that the government is planning things in advance and is over prepared."
The government reiterated that as part of the preparedness efforts, training of health staff is also an area of focus through the mentor institutes like AIIMS and NIMHANS, Bengaluru. “Online training modules and webinars for ventilator management, clinical management, infection prevention control, bio medical waste management and epidemiology have been organised by these institutions,” a statement by the government said. “To prepare frontline medical workers, mock drills too have been organised.”