BENGALURU: Of the 543 deaths linked to Covid-19 in the state so far, 65 have been audited, revealed senior pulmonologist Dr K S Satish at a press meet with Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar on Friday.“Over 80% of the cases reported are asymptomatic that don’t need hospitalisation. About 2% might require ICU and ventilator with antiviral treatment and antibiotics. Most deaths are of patients above 60 years old with co-morbidities, like uncontrolled diabetes and blood pressure,” said Dr Satish, who is part of the death audit committee.
A software program is being developed for doctors to upload the case sheet onto the computer which will allow the death audit committee to collate the information within 24 hours, to analyse Covid-related deaths. Without such a tool, the analysis was taking up time, he told TNIE. Both Dr Satish and Dr Sudhakar advised wearing of masks at home for the elderly and observing reverse quarantine. Dr Sudhakar said that the public can soon access a central bed allocation system that will provide real-time information on Covid and non-Covid beds in private and government hospitals.
The government on
Friday met private hospital managements to discuss various issues, including reserving beds for corona treatment, providing human resources and managing Covid care centres.“To begin with, 20,000 antigen tests will be done in Bengaluru from Saturday and the remaining 50,000 will be done within a week. Res of the 30,000 kits are being sent to districts depending on the caseload and arrival of travellers. Two lakh more kits will be ordered, taking the total to 3 lakh kits,” Dr Sudhakar said.
Officials insisted that there is no shortage of beds. “Action will be taken and criminal cases filed under the National Disaster Management Authority and Epidemic Diseases Acts, against hospitals who deny beds to patients,” Health Commissioner Pankaj Kumar Pandey said.The authorities said that triaging of patients will be done at the time of testing but it was unclear as to how this could be done given that the corona test result will not be known for a while.