BENGALURU: The active Covid-19 caseload in Bengaluru breached the 1-lakh mark on Monday, something that had never happened even during the peak of last year’s first wave and an indication that infections are spreading much faster.
Currently Pune, which has the country’s highest active caseload at 1.2 lakh cases, is the only district ahead of Bengaluru. Besides, four other districts in Karnataka — Bidar, Kalaburagi, Mysuru and Tumakuru — have more than 3,000 active cases.
As on Sunday (April 19), India’s total active caseload had reached 19,29,329. Of these, five states —
Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala — together accounted for 63.1% of the cases. Karnataka’s share of the country’s active caseload is nearly 7%.
Experts TOI spoke with say the only way to efficiently handle the increasing caseload is to categorise patients depending on the care they need and ensure sufficient beds.
“If 15,000 cases are reported in Bengaluru every day and if say 90% are fit enough for home isolation, a minimum 1,500 patients will need to be hospitalised,” said a doctor working on the BBMP expert’s committee. “At the current rate, 1,500 beds are not falling vacant every day. It takes a minimum 4-5 days to discharge a Covid-infected patient from hospital. Saving lives will become much harder from here on,” the doctor said.
In the past 10 days, a majority of the fresh cases in Bengaluru were reported from BBMP’s south zone (15,811) which accounts for 19% of all cases, followed by west and east zones which account for 15% each.
Karnataka’s Covid-19 technical advisory committee (TAC) has suggested that the government order select private hospitals to set up operations in hotels, which are stepdown hospitals equipped with oxygen beds.
“This has been done in Mumbai and Delhi,” said a TAC member. “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,” the member said.
The biggest challenge is to accommodate new patients in need of admission, said Dr BK Vijendra, chief health officer, BBMP. “A meeting with all elected representatives has been held,” Dr Vijendra said, adding that the government will take appropriate measures.
Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes Association (PHANA) said more restrictions are needed to break the chain of transmission. “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 of 10 medical colleges that have the infrastructure can be done and 8,000 beds can be created,” said Dr HM Prasanna, president PHANA. He said private hospitals are already stretched to capacity.