Active Covid cases in Bengaluru goes beyond 1-lakh mark

Bengaluru: The active Covid-19 cases has gone beyond the 1-lakh mark on Monday. This has never happened before even during the peak of the first wave. This indicates that the infection is spreading at a higher pace.

Presently Pune is ahead of Bengaluru with the highest cases of 1.2 lakh. Besides four other districts in Karnataka- Bidar, Kalaburagi, Mysuru and Tumakuru- have more than 3,000 active cases.

As of Sunday, India’s active cases had reached 19,29,329. Out of these, five states, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala accounted for 63.1% of the cases. Karnataka’s share is nearly 7%.

According to the experts, the only way to handle the increasing cases is to categorise patients according to their needs and ensure adequate beds.

A doctor working on the BBMP’s committee said, “If 15,000 cases are reported in Bengaluru every day and if say 90% are fit enough for home isolation, a minimum of 1,500 patients will need to be hospitalised.” He added, “At the current rate, 1,500 beds are not falling vacant every day. It takes a minimum of 4-5 days to discharge a Covid-infected patient from the hospital. Saving lives will become much harder from here on.”

In the last 10 days, most of the cases were reported from BBMP’s south zone which accounts for 19% of all cases which is followed by west and east zones which account for 15% each.

Karnataka’s Covid-19 technical advisory committee (TAC) has advised to select private hospitals to set up operations in hotels that are step-down hospitals equipped with oxygen beds.

A TAC member said that it has been done in Mumbai and Delhi. He said, “Not every patient can be accommodated in hospitals henceforth and hence we need a system between hospitals and Covid Care Centres. These hotel-Covid care centres will have doctors and nurses and can be managed by the staff of private hospitals. They will be nothing but units of the hospitals in hotels.”

Dr BK Vijendra, chief health officer, BBMP said that the biggest challenge is to accommodate new patients in need of admission. He informed that a meeting with all elected representatives has been held and the government will take appropriate measures.

Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes Associations (PHANA) are of the view that more stringent measures are needed to break the chain of transmission. Dr HM Prasanna, president of PHANA said, “Even if fresh cases come down by 10%, that will be a huge relief. Most private hospitals have limited scope to scale up. Instead, better utilisation if 10 medical colleges that have the infrastructure can be done and 8,000 beds can be created.” He added that private hospitals are already stretching the capacity.