Amid Unprecedented Covid Surge, Kerala Scrambles To Ramp Up Oxygen Beds

As Kerala reported over 30,000 coronavirus cases for the first time, the state government is facing the challenge to ramp up the availability of critical care beds on war footing.

The state's positivity rate today crossed an all-time high of 23 per cent.

Amid the surge, the Covid war rooms in every district have been buzzing with activity.

"Currently, my task is to call every medical officer of the frontline centres. I will get updates on how many beds are available. I will share this with other team members, who will log in the updates immediately. So, they can shift patients within 5 minutes after the need arises," says Sabari, a volunteer.

This Covid challenge, though, is getting increasingly difficult.

Data on patients, beds and the available resources is now being updated every four hours at these district level-nerve centres. The urgency is visible as frequency of phone calls has multiplied over the last two weeks.

The triage system - of demarcating patients into categories A, B and C - has been the backbone of resource allocation in Kerala. This process begins at the primary health centres and is again repeated at these war rooms, if need be.

In Kerala, especially Ernakulam and Thiruvananthapuram, where bed occupancy at government hospitals has crossed 70%, the focus is on ramping up critical care beds.

The state-run medical colleges in both the districts are looking at doubling their ICU beds.

"When we began in June. Our capacity was around 300 beds… We later could increase it to 1,500 critical care beds and 3,500 beds. This time we are very closely focusing on ventilators, ICUs and oxygen beds," Thiruvananthapuram Collector Navjyot Khosa told NDTV.  

"There is a delay reported in some places while allocating patients to hospitals in Kochi currently. But we have bed capacity in the government hospitals and are ramping this up further. We are aiming an immediate increase of 20% in bed capacity and by two weeks, it will be increased to 50%. Due to the triage system, only B and C category patients are getting priority".

Several private hospitals across Kerala have reported full occupancy, and they have extended their wards further for the coronavirus patients, as Covid numbers are expected to rise steeply in the near future. The Kerala government has asked them to reserve at least 25% of beds for Covid patients.  

"There have been frantic calls for beds. Till two days ago, we had to say no to many patients. Yesterday, we could open another ward to increase bed strength, especially oxygen-supported beds. We are now able to take patients directly or through the district war room", Dr Rajalakshmi, Senior Consultant, Infectious Diseases, KIMS Healthcare told NDTV.  

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday said the state has seen an increase of 255 per cent cases in the last two weeks. "Our priority is to ensure (enough) oxygen-supported beds and ample availability of medical oxygen. We are further going to ramp up the availability and will create buffer stocks," he said.

Kerala is among the states with the highest registered doctors per 1 lakh population, according to the Medical Council of India.  

Gayatri LK, who is coordinating the contact-tracing measures at the COVID-19 war room, said: "Recently we have deployed 2,000 teachers. They will help the rapid response team on the field to track and identify patients and isolate them".