Covid Beds Nearly Full, How Bengaluru Hospitals Are Battling Rising Cases

Amid a steep rise in the Coronavirus cases in Bengaluru, almost all the beds set aside for the Covid patients in many hospitals have been occupied.

At the Ramaiah Medical College Hospital in Bengaluru, of the 100 beds set aside for the Covid patients, 88 are full.

Dr Harish K Associate Dean, Ramaiah Medical College Hospital hopes that the second wave "won't be as bad as the first wave."

"We hope there will be an earlier peak and a shorter duration", he told NDTV.

There has been learning from the first wave, but this time around, there are other challenges.

"In the first wave, we were unprepared in terms of the way the virus behaved, the PPE, the infrastructure. We are well equipped to handle the second wave but there are certain other issues we have to see," said Dr Harish.

"In the first wave, our hospitals were nearly empty because of the lockdown. Only the Covid cases were being treated. Now our hospitals are full of non-Covid cases. Now we have both Covid and non-Covid cases to treat. The manpower, the infrastructure to handle both is a big challenge," he said.

In Manipal Hospital, the ICU for Covid patients has been getting busier. The four hospitals of this group in the city have set aside about 20 per cent or 200 beds, including ICU beds, for Covid patients. All of them are full.

Dr. Ajith Kumar AK, Consultant - Critical Care Medicine, Manipal Hospitals said, "We are also experiencing a slow increase in the number of cases in the ICU in the last 3,4 weeks. Reports say there are more young people in this current surge of Covid. But maybe the cases in young people are not that severe. In our ICU, we are coming across people between the ages of 50 to 70 years and not the young people. "

In another part of Bengaluru, in the Specialist Hospital, 20 rooms have been set aside for Covid patients - all are full. But there is more optimism this time among the medical staff.

Dr Kanchan, Covid in charge, Specialist Hospital, told NDTV, "We noticed this in the first week of March. It came with a bang and now the cases are rising. Compared to the first wave, I think we are in a much better position to handle this crisis. Simply because we have a set Standard Operating Procedure. And a definitive treatment protocol which is making it much easier for us to handle the pressures."

Karnataka recorded nearly (2,000) 3000 cases on Tuesday. Of the 2,975 cases that the state logged in a day, 1,984 have been reported from Bengaluru alone.

The rising numbers in Bengaluru have been described by the state government as alarming. And once again, the Covid warriors in PPE kits are ready for the fight.