I&PR Commissioner, ex officio secretary to State government and COVID-19 Task Force member T. Vijay Kumar Reddy has said the government will procure 90,000 doses of the anti-viral drug, Remdesivir, by August-end as a precautionary measure to treat critical patients.

He said that 5,000 doses of the drug had already been sent to various hospitals, Mr. Kumar said in a press release.

Mr. Kumar said the government had been going all out in its response to COVID-19 pandemic. He said the primary focus was on equipping hospitals with required safety and treatment facilities for the staff as well as the patients.

He said there were 4,300 ICU beds in 138 COVID-19 hospitals. These apart, there were 17,382 non-ICU beds with oxygen supply lines. “Also, there are 17, 370 non-ICU beds without oxygen supply lines,” he said.

He said 8.60 lakh PPE kits and 7.02 masks were made available at all the hospitals in the State. Mr. Kumar said the State was in the forefront in testing and had a ratio of 32,761 tests per million against 12,498 in the country. “The State’s positivity rate is also low at 6.30% despite high testing figures,” he added.

He further said the government was going to recruit 9,712 personnel by August. “The government is going to incur ₹900 crore expenditure on the new recruitments,” he added.