Bengaluru, September 23: Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a Video Conference with Chief Ministers of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Andra Pradesh, New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab States which has high prevalence of Covid -19 cases.
Chief Minister B.S.Yediyurappa took part in the video conference and briefed the Prime Minister about the measures undertaken by the State Government to control the pandemic.
Highlights of the Meeting:
1. Testing facilities have been ramped up substantially in the State. Now we have 136 testing laboratories and the testing has been increased to about 70,000 samples per day. So far more than 43 lakh samples have been tested.
2. All the symptomatic positive patients are shifted to hospitals immediately after knowing the results. For this purpose the number of ambulances has been increased from 800 to 2000.
3. A target has been set to identify all the contacts of positive cases within 24 hours to 48 hours and quarantine them.
4. Increase in the number of tests is helping us to bringdown positivity and case fatality steadily. The State has witnessed highest fatality rate of 2.6% between 13th July and 19th July, 2020.
5. Thereafter, the fatality is coming down steadily. Presently, Karnataka’s case death rate stands at 1.54 %, whereas, in the last one week, the death rate was only 1.3%. Fatality rate will be brought down to less than 1% as per the goal set by the Prime Minister, soon.
6. We have set up a Committee to give us protocol of clinical management. The Committee regularly goes through the Government of India’s and ICMR’s recommendations and recommends the treatment protocol for the State. Presently, the third version of the recommendation is being implemented in the State.
7. Besides giving normal medicines, we are ensuring that patients are given ‘Novel Drugs’ for free, though these are expensive. We are maintaining continuous supply of all the medicines including medicines like Remdesivir.
8. Oxygenated beds, ICUs and Ventilators are very important to treat serious COVID patients. When the disease started, we had about 7,000 oxygenated beds in Government Hospitals. This number has been increased to about 18,000. More than 10,000 of these beds have been reserved for COVID patients. Apart from this, another 4,250 oxygenated beds have been reserved for COVID patients in private hospitals.
9. Similarly, Government of Karnataka has reserved 1811 ICU beds in Government Hospitals and another 1269 in private hospitals for COVID patients.
10. Once the work of oxygenationof beds is completed we will have more than 31,000 such beds in Government Hospitals alone.
11. We have set up State level and District level teams of senior officers to ensure that oxygen is transported to needy hospitals across the state in time. Permission to convert Industrial oxygen cylinders as Medical cylinders has also been issued. The work of increasing storage capacity in deficient hospitals has been taken up on a war footing.
12. Due to an increase in the number of oxygenated beds and ICUs, consumption of oxygen is increasing drastically. Availability for liquidoxygen for medicalpurposes is presently around 375 metric ton per day which is sufficient for the time being.
13. However, once the project of increasing the number oxygenated beds is completed and there is a surge in the number of positive cases, we will not be able to provide sufficient medical oxygen without affecting industries. The peak demand of medical oxygen is calculated to be about 870 metric ton per day.
14. Keeping this in view, it was requested that the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion may be advised to persuade and incentivise the industry to set up new oxygen generation units.
15. It was also requested that the manufacture of hospital level oxygen generation units is also encouraged to ramp up their production capacity. At present, these firms are asking for 3-4 months’ time to supply such units.
Suggestions of Union Government
1. Mission mode approach in the next 6 months
2. Strict enforcement in containment zones and dynamically redefines them.
3. Re-testing of all symptomatic negatives of antigen tests .
4. Jeevan bhi aur Jeevika bhi (Graded opening of economic activities after ensuring adequate testing and hospital infrastructure.)
5. Ensure wide publicity about precautionary measures in media
6. Organize awareness programmes regarding Covid -19
7. Regular monitoring of those who are in home isolation
8. Karnataka has been conducting tests in a scientific way.
9. Concentrate more on 9 districts where highest number of deaths have been recorded.
10. Increase surveillance and RTPCR tests to threefold.
B.Sriramulu,Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Dr.K.Sudhakar, Minister for Medical Education, T.M.Vijayabhaskar, Chief Secretary to GOK, Dr.E.V.Ramanareddy, ACS to CM and other officers were present.
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