SRIKAKULAM: A sharp spike of Covid-19, oxygenated beds were filling up fast in all private and government designated Covid hospitals in the district. With Covid-19 positive cases increasing rapidly in the district, demand for beds, both ICU and oxygen, and ventilator beds are increasing day by day.
On Saturday, there are 19,612 active cases in the district. Of them 16,705 were in home isolation, 987 were in Covid-19 Care Centres (CCC) and 1,920 were in Covid-19 hospitals.
According to State Covid-19 dashboard, 280 ICU beds occupied out of 330, 1,156 oxygen beds occupied out of 1,317 and 162 patients were on ventilator support in the district. In the second wave, more number of patients have lung infections, which is increasing the requirement for oxygen support. Each patient requires hospital stay of 10 to 12 days. Therefore, if a new patient requires oxygen support, then it will be very difficult for the officials to manage the situation.
From the last one week, 70 to 100 new admissions have been recorded in the Covid-19 hospitals daily. Of these, 50 per cent of cases needed oxygen support. As per the present trends, the number of Covid-19 positive patients admitting for oxygen support will increase day by day. Even though the district administration is utilising every opportunity to increase the oxygen beds, the caseload creates tensions in officials.
District Collector J Nivas said, “As of now there is no shortage of oxygen beds in the district. We are planning to arrange 500 more beds in this week. I requested Visakhapatnam Collector to allocate 300 beds for the residents of Srikakulam district in NRI hospital based on the Covid spike. We took all the oxygen beds in private hospitals and set up oxygen beds in Rajam, Palakonda, Ichchapuram, Palasa, Haripuram and Mandasa.”