HYDERABAD: Shortage of manpower may be a cause of worry for the Health Department, which on Monday gave orders to resume all non-Covid services across government hospitals in Telangana. The decision was welcomed as 60-80 per cent of cases at many hospitals were non-Covid patients, however, the shortage in manpower already seems to be hurting the hospitals.
In a majority of the hospitals, the shortage is being seen in three departments - General Medicine, Anesthesia and Pulmonology. This is forcing hospitals to draw staff from other departments as the number of Covid-related patients are still sizeable, with quite a few being admitted in ICUs as well.
“These three departments have both Covid and non-Covid services, and the limited manpower is getting exhausted due to overworking,” said a senior doctor from a hospital in the districts. Currently, at government hospitals, there are 60 vacant posts.
Doctors from the Anesthesia wing have to manage not only the Covid ICU ward for emergencies, but also surgeries - both Covid and non-Covid cases. “Post lockdown, the number of surgeries have also increased, specially from the gynaecology wing, which has led to some difficulties in allocation of staff,” said a doctor.
After quarantine rules were relaxed, doctors are being shuffled between Covid and non-Covid wards, this has lead to the fear that not only will the staff get infected en-masse, so will patients, giving rise to a second wave. “There are no proper social distancing norms or adherance to wearing masks. The number of OPD and inpatients has increased and they have to be handled by a handful of PG residents.
If qurantine rules are not restored, then it is likely that the infection rate among healthcare workers, which was once at 18 per cent, will shoot up,” said Dr Naresh, president of Senior Resident Doctor’s Association.Telangana Junior Doctor Association submitted a representation and said that considering the fact that 294 PG doctors have been infected till date, quarantine rules should not be removed.
TS adds 1,021 new cases to tally, six deaths recorded
Telangana recorded 1,021 cases of Covid-19 on Sunday, according the media bulletin released on Monday morning. Following the trend of a sharp decline in mortality, the State had just six deaths on the day taking the toll to 1,228. The total active caseload for the State stood at 24,514.
In terms of the caseload GHMC was leading with 228 cases and among the districts Rangareddy and Medchal had 68 and 84 cases, respectively.
However, the week-on-week increase look bad for Narayanpet and Adilabad, which showed marked increase with 31 per cent and 21 per cent, respectively. While cases in Narayanpet grew from 65 to 85 this week, in Adilabad it grew from 139 to 168 cases.
But, majority of the cases were not serious and less than 5 per cent of hospital beds are occupied. Meanwhile, on the whole, the State had 4,478 Covid-19 patients in the hospital, leading to freeing up of several hospital beds.
Govt Chief Whip vinay bhaskar tests positive
Warangal: Government Chief Whip D Vinay Bhaskar has tested positive for the Coronavirus. As suggested by doctors, he is in home isolation. On Sunday, he along with Panchayat Raj Minister Errabelli Dayakar Rao distributed Bathukamma sarees to women at Waddepally. He also took part in a preparatory meeting for MLC polls with public representatives. Everyone, who came in contact with him,
have been advised to take the Covid-19 test as a precaution