From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network
Bengaluru, Sep 23: Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a video conference with chief ministers of the seven states accounting for the maximum number of COVID cases - Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab – and advised them to adopt Mission Mode approach for the next six months.
Karnataka chief minister B S Yediyurappa, who took part in the video conference with the Prime Minister along with state health and family welfare minister B Sriramulu, medical education minister Dr K Sudhakar, chief secretary Dr E V Ramana Reddy and other senior officials, briefed the Prime Minister about the measures undertaken by the state government to control the pandemic.
Among the suggestions offered by Modi is Mission Mode Approach for the next six months and to concentrate on nine districts with the highest number of deaths.
The 11 suggestions are:
• Mission mode approach in the next 6 months
• Strict enforcement in containment zones and dynamically redefines them.
• Re-testing of all symptomatic negatives of antigen tests.
• Jeevan bhi aurJeevika bhi (graded opening of economic activities after ensuring adequate testing and hospital infrastructure.)
• Ensure wide publicity about precautionary measures in media
• Organize awareness programmes regarding COVID-19
• Regular monitoring of those who are in home isolation
• Karnataka has been conducting tests in a scientific way.
• Concentrate more on nine districts where the highest number of deaths have been recorded.
• Increase surveillance and RT-PCR tests to threefold.
Karnataka testing 70,000 samples a day
Yediyurappa in his briefing to the Prime Minister mentioned that Karnataka has substantially ramped up testing facilities with 136 testing laboratories across the state and increasing the number of tests to 70,000 samples a day.
The chief minister said Karnataka has tested more than 43 lac samples so far.
All the symptomatic positive patients are shifted to hospitals immediately after knowing the results, he said pointing out that the number of ambulances has been increased from 800 to 2000.
The state government has set a target to identify all the contacts of positive cases within 24 hours to 48 hours and quarantine them, Yediyurappa said mentioning that the increase in the number of tests is helping the state to bringdown positivity and case fatality rates steadily.
The state has witnessed the highest fatality rate of 2.6% between July 13 and July 19, he said claiming that the fatality is coming down steadily. "Presently, Karnataka’s case death rate stands at 1.54 %, whereas, in the last 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,’’ he said.
"We have set up a Committee to give us a 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,’’ he said.
Apart from giving normal medicines, the state government is ensuring that patients are given ‘Novel Drugs’ for free, though these are expensive. We are maintaining a continuous supply of all the medicines including medicines like Remdesivir, he said.
The chief minister said 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,’’ he said.
The state government has also reserved 1811 ICU beds in government hospitals and another 1,269 in private hospitals for COVID patients. "Once the work of oxygenation of beds is completed we will have more than 31,000 such beds in government hospitals alone,’’ Yediyurappa claimed.
The state government has 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 have also been issued. The work of increasing storage capacity in deficient hospitals has been taken up on a war footing.
Due to an increase in the number of oxygenated beds and ICUs, the consumption of oxygen is increasing drastically. Availability for liquid oxygen for medical purposes is presently around 375 metric tonnes per day which is sufficient for the time being, he said adding: "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 tonnes per day,’’ he said.
"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. Further, it is 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 to 4 months’ time to supply such units,’’ he added.