BHUBANESWAR: Despite early gains due to preemptive steps for setting up health infrastructure exclusively for the management of Covid-19 patients, Odisha continues to lag behind in terms of availability of beds, ICU facilities and ventilators as compared to other states. As per the statistics available with the State dashboard, it has 60 beds per one lakh population in its Covid facilities against the national average of 137.
While Karnataka has 390 beds and Kerala 255 beds per one lakh population, Andhra Pradesh has 208 beds and Tamil Nadu has 70 beds. Odisha is among 10 States, including the four where the coronavirus infection is rising rapidly. The states have a daily Covid case growth rate of five to 10 per cent. Odisha has 35 Dedicated Covid Hospitals (DCHs) and 178 Covid Care Centres (CCCs) with 26,636 beds, including 5577 beds in hospitals for serious patients. But it has only 455 beds in ICU and 266 ventilators.
Alarming Situation
The State has only six ventilators for 10 lakh population. Shortage of doctors also cripples the healthcare services as there is one doctor for every 5446 people which is lower than the national average of 1:1457 and WHO norm of 1:1000. Around 8023 MBBS doctors and 4014 AYUSH practitioners have been engaged in Covid duty. As the surge in coronavirus positive cases continues unabated, poor health infrastructure has become a cause of worry. In July alone, 26,163 cases were added to the tally. If cases keep increasing at the present positivity rate of 10 pc per day due to opening up of more activities following relaxation of lockdown norms, health experts believe the State would soon run out of hospital beds.
According to the prevailing guidelines, patients with mild or no symptoms are being kept in CCCs before being discharged after 10 days of isolation. Patients with severe symptoms and serious cases are being referred to DCHs. Since testing is mostly concentrated on people with symptoms guided by the door-todoor surveillance, most of the patients may require admission to hospitals putting pressure on the existing set up. As no private hospital here is allowed to treat Covid-19 patients, all cases are now referred to public hospitals. The situation is more alarming in the poorly equipped districts like Malkangiri, Koraput, Rayadaga, Gajapati and Nabarangpur where the infection is on the rise.
Of the 1662 confirmed cases, the fourth worst hit Gajapati has 625 active cases. But the administration had to move patients to other nearby districts and Bhubaneswar as the district has only 602 beds. Similarly, Rayagada has 100 beds in DCHs and 600 beds in CCCs. But it has 570 active cases of which more than 40 pc have symptoms needing hospital care. In worst-hit Ganjam, the number of active cases stands at 3,332 as against the availability of 3550 beds.
Health experts alleged that the poor health infrastructure could be the reason behind the low testing in the State, which is conducting 264 tests per day per million population as against the national average of 324. “All other states have ramped up testing except Odisha. How can we check the spread if we do not find out positive cases and isolate them as quick as possible?,” said former president of OMSA Dr Nirakar Bhatta. He added that though the association had been demanding ICU units with ventilator support in all sub-divisional hospitals, the State Government is yet to take a call.