India’s COVID-19 cases continue to rise with the majority of cases arising from 6 key states such as Maharashtra, Punjab among others. India recorded 56,211 new cases of coronavirus, a slight dip from the country’s record-breaking tallies over the last three days, data from the health ministry showed on Tuesday (March 29).
In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Om Manchanda, managing director (MD) of Dr Lal PathLabs, spoke at length about how much COVID-19 testing has risen in the north and Viren Shetty, executive director and group COO of Narayana Health, gave a better understanding about the diktat by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on allocation of COVID-19 beds.
As the second wave of COVID-19 picks up in Mumbai, the city’s civic body BMC announced taking over beds in private hospitals. According to the new guidelines issued late last night, BMC is taking over 80 percent of the total COVID beds and 100 percent of intensive care unit (ICU) beds at private hospitals.
First, talking about COVID-19 testing, Manchanda said, “A rise in volume has been much lesser in northern India than what we have seen in western India and realisation per test has halved, so the surge is more in volumes than in value of what we have seen in the last quarter.”
Meanwhile, talking about allocation of COVID-19 beds, Shetty said that BMC took proactive steps in reaching out to the hospitals for COVID-dedicated beds.
“The BMC has taken a very good and proactive step about reaching out to all the hospitals and asking them to dedicating the same space that was dedicated for COVID patients earlier,” he said.
Talking about COVID-19 occupancy, he said, “We were overconfident last year looking at the very low numbers coming out in India while it was raging in Europe. I do feel that India will follow the same trajectory as every country does, but if I were to give some hope into this discussion I would say that we are definitely seeing patients being a lot sicker this time.”
However, Shetty said it seems like 2021 is a repeat of last year and next 2 months will be very crucial.
For entire discussion, watch the video