Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Apr 18: The union minister of state for road transport and highways V K Singh had to issue a request on twitter to “find a hospital bed” for his “brother,” a Covid patient, in Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh.
The former chief of the army staff quickly followed it up with a denial to claim that his “tweet” in Hindi was only to “attract” the district magistrate’s attention to arrange for a bed for a patient in Ghaziabad, his Lok Sabha constituency, who was “not related to him by blood.” But the fact that even a minister found it difficult to locate a hospital bed for someone he was keen to help “on grounds of humanity” and finally the issue had to be resolved “with the help of the UP chief minister’s office” speak volumes of the acute shortage of health infrastructure facilities in the country and the enormous problem the general public was facing as the situation rapidly deteriorating with huge daily spike in the number of new cases.
Like Singh, the government understandably too is in the denial mode refusing to accept there was any shortage of hospital beds, oxygen, drugs and injections or any other basic needs of the Covid patients. In Shahadol in Madhya Pradesh, six Covid patients died and their relatives claimed that the deaths were caused by non-availability of oxygen but the state government denied there was any shortage of the life-saving gas cylinders.
VK Singh’s tweet comes at a time when the country is reeling under the second wave of Covid-19 infections and Uttar Pradesh is among the 10 states reporting nearly 79% of daily new cases. The Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal made a fervent appeal to the prime minister Narendra Modi for arranging more hospital beds, oxygen and other facilities as was the requests coming from most other states reeling under the second wave of the pandemic.
As India created yet another new dubious record of registering 261,500 new Covid-19 cases and 1,501 related deaths were in a span of 24 hours, the union health ministry said the disease was continuing to spread fast across the country. The positivity rate in the country has also increased at a fast pace, raising concerns for the experts.
“The daily positivity rate in the last 12 days has doubled from 8% to 16.69%,” the health ministry said in a statement. “The national weekly positivity rate has increased from 3.05% to 13.54% in the last one month.”
Kejriwal on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking more beds and oxygen for coronavirus disease patients as he said the Covid-19 situation in the national capital was “very serious”. In his letter to PM, Kejriwal appealed regarding urgent supply of oxygen and allocation of more beds for Covid-19 patients in hospitals run by the central government. “The coronavirus situation in Delhi has become very serious. There is a severe shortage of corona beds and oxygen. Almost all the ICU beds are full. All of us are trying our level best but we need your help,” Kejriwal wrote in the letter in Hindi.
“There are about 10,000 beds in central government hospitals in Delhi, out of which only 1800 beds are reserved for corona patients. We request to increase this to 7000 beds in view of the seriousness of the situation,” he also said.
The Delhi chief minister also thanked Modi for instructing the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to set up 500 Covid-19 beds and asked for the numbers to be increased by 1000. “So far, there has been a lot of support from the central government in this pandemic. I hope that you will definitely help us on the relevant topics as well,” Kejriwal said.
This comes as Delhi is battling with the fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic, during which Covid-19 cases have risen multiple folds as the city broke records of daily cases reported in previous waves. On Saturday, Delhi logged 24,375 fresh cases of viral disease in the sharpest spike in a single day so far. It also reported 167 fatalities in the span of 24 hours, which pushed the death toll to nearly 12,000.
Earlier in the day, Kejriwal said he has requested Union health minister Harsh Vardhan and home minister Amit Shah to increase the number of Covid-19 beds in hospitals under the central government. He also alerted the Centre that the shortage of beds and oxygen could trigger a major crisis any moment as the situation was deteriorating every passing second. “There are less than 100 ICU beds left in Delhi. We are facing a major shortage of oxygen too. Last night, a private hospital told us that they almost ran into a disaster situation last night with a major shortage of oxygen supply,” he said in a video conference.
“I have requested him (Shah) to reserve at least 7,000 beds for Covid-19. The situation in Delhi is deteriorating every second. I also requested that oxygen supply be provided to us immediately,” he added.
The Delhi chief minister termed the Covid-19 situation in the national capital as “very serious”, and wrote to Modi on Sunday seeking help for beds and oxygen for coronavirus patients.
Besides UP which recorded more than 24,000 cases, Chhattisgarh reported the highest weekly positivity rate at 30.38 per cent, followed by Goa at 24.24 per cent, Maharashtra at 24.17 per cent, Rajasthan at 23.33 per cent and Madhya Pradesh at 18.99 per cent, the union health ministry said.
Concerned by the surge in cases, the Prime Minister on Saturday evening held a vaccination review meeting with senior state officials and asked authorities to pull out all the stops to ramp up production of Covid-19 vaccines.
The Prime Minister also reviewed his administration’s overall preparedness and stressed the need to ensure the availability of hospital beds and the supplies of oxygen and ventilators. He also asked his team to work closely with local governments, especially the 12 states ravaged by the latest wave in cases.
Opposition parties, including the Congress, criticised Modi for addressing large election rallies to help the BJP win the state assembly election in West Bengal with the politicians acting as the super-spreaders. The union home minister Amit Shah expectedly refuted the allegation and said it was wrong to link on-going elections with the Corona surge.
Meanwhile, Modi’s predecessor and the veteran Congress leader Manmohan Singh urged his successor to allow states to define categories of frontline workers that need to be vaccinated against Covid on priority “even if they are below 45 years of age.” Asking the centre to place “enough” vaccine orders in advance, Singh, in a letter, said the distribution of jabs among states should be based on a “transparent formula.”
“States should be given some flexibility to define categories of frontline workers who can be vaccinated even if they are below 45 years of age. For example, states may want to designate schoolteachers, bus, three-wheeler and taxi drivers, municipal and panchayat staff, and possibly lawyers who have to attend Courts as frontline workers. They can then be vaccinated even if they are below 45,” the former prime minister said in his letter to Modi.
As of now, the centre only allows vaccinations of those aged 45 or above.
The former prime minister stressed on ramping up the vaccination drive to defeat the coronavirus pandemic and said the centre must proactively support vaccine producers in expanding their manufacturing facilities by providing funds and other concessions.
“The government should publicise what are the firm orders for doses placed on different vaccine producers and accepted for delivery over the next six months. If we want to vaccinate a target number in this period, we should place enough orders in advance so that producers can adhere to an agreed schedule of supply,” he wrote.
He said the centre should retain only 10 per cent of this expected supply for emergency needs. “…other than that, states should have a clear signal of likely availability so that they can plan their roll out,” he said.
Singh said the government should allow several companies to produce the vaccines under a licence to increase production. He also urged the centre to allow vaccines made by foreign companies in the country without bridging trials.
