The Covid-19 situation in Hyderabad is turning alarming as Covid-19 transmission increases by the day and top corporate hospitals in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad are running out of beds.

“We have 90 beds for Covid patients at our Jubilee Hills facility. All of them are occupied,” a spokesperson of Apollo Hospitals told BusinessLine .

A spokesperson of the Asian Institute of Gastroenterology (AIG), which has 282 Covid beds, said the hospital has a wait list of 30 patients at any given time.

Medicover Hospitals, which has 404 Covid beds in three branches, also reported full occupancy.

On Saturday, the State hit the 5,000-mark in new positive cases. This is an all-time high ever since the first Covid case reported a year ago. As many as 15 persons have succumbed to the infection, while a whopping 37,037 are under treatment.

Anxious relatives of patients are running from one hospital to another, seeking beds with oxygen supply and ICU beds for their kin. Though the government has allowed all the private hospitals with 10 beds and above to treat the Covid patients, a handful of corporate hospitals are in a huge demand. “

Remdesivir supply

The sudden spurt in the positive cases has resulted in a shortage of anti-viral drug Remdesivir. The State Government has swung into action and has centralised distribution of Remdesivir, making the injections available directly to the needy hospitals.

“If one person is infected, the entire family is getting infected as the virus has turned virulent. The State reported 4,446 new positive cases on Friday. The positivity rate doubled in six months,” G Srinivasa Rao, Director of Telangana Public Health Department, has said.

Meanwhile, the Government has decided to convert the Gandhi Hospital as an exclusive Covid facility. “The number of beds for Covid patients has doubled to 39,000 as on April 16 from about 18,000 in September, 2020. We are going to increase the number to 53,500 in the next few weeks,” he said.

Vaccine demand

With fear psychosis gripping people, thousands of people are making a beeline to vaccination centres.

PS Murthy, a retired professor who came for his second dose of Covishield in a private hospital, was asked to come another day.

A good number of them included those who are supposed to take their second dose vaccine shortages had forced the Health Department to suspend the vaccination drive for a day on Sunday.

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