Deputy Chief Minister and Minister for Health, Medical and Family Welfare Alla Kali Krishna Srinivas said that State government is going all out to fight COVID-19 in view of increasing infections.
Addressing a press conference here on Monday, Mr. Srinivas said that of the total 48,956 active patients about 15,000 asymptomatic patients have been allowed to stay under home isolation and 13,992 are being treated in COVID-19 hospitals while the remaining are being treated at the COVID-19 Care Centres. He said that there are 138 COVID-19 hospitals and 84 are fully functional and staff and infrastructure is being improved in the rest.
He said that the State has been spending over ₹5 crore on testing alone and the testing capacity has increased to 50,000 samples per day.
He attributed the rise in the number of positives to targeted testing in clusters with more cases. Private hospitals violating guidelines will be shut.
Regarding beds availability in hospitals Mr. Srinivas said that some hospitals are creating artificial demand by turning away patients and to solve this we are soon going to set up a website where the occupancy and vacancy can be seen by everyone.
He said private hospitals have earmarked some beds to COVID-19 patients in collaboration with the government and all the pricing for those beds should be as per the government guidelines. "Some of the hospitals were already warned and notices will be served. If they still continue to violate hospitals will be shut down," he said.
He said there are over 39,051 beds including 4,300 ICU beds available in 138 COVID-19 hospitals and 46,698 beds are available in COVID-19 Care Centres.
State is fully equipped
The State has 1,513 ventilators and 1,000 more are being procured through central government. "We have 271 x-ray machines, 22,908 pulse oxy meters, 8.60 lakh PPE kits, 7.02 lakh PPE kits and there is no need for the staff to worry," he said. In addition to the five territorial care hospitals in Chittoor, Kurnool, Krishna, Nellore and Visakhapatnam districts five more in East Godavari, West Godavari, Anantapur and Srikakulam are coming up, he said.
According to staff are being recruited like never before, he said. By August 15 we are going to recruit over 13 thousand staff and another 17,000 staff will be recruited temporarily, he said.
He said people can dial 104 for all their queries and instructions have been given to the call centres to provide complete guidance to the callers.
He further said that 217 '108 Ambulances' have been allocated for shifting of COVID-19 positive persons and suspects.
Regarding issues over testing delay Mr. Srinivas said that due to the burden on labs certain incidents are happening and the authorities are trying to resolve them. We have applied for permissions for more labs with ICMR, he said.
