More than half the patients admitted for Covid-19 treatment at Gandhi Hospital, the primary care centre of the government in Telangana for treating Coronavirus victims, are in the hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU).
Figures released by the health department in its daily Covid-19 bulletin for the day show that,on Wednesday, 495 of the 896 patients in Gandhi were in the ICU. There were an additional 335 patients who have been placed on some form of assisted breathing system.
This set of 335 patients include those on supplementary oxygen supply, CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), and BiPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure) machines. Both CPAP and BiPAP machines are not invasive and use masks placed on the patient’s face unlike ventilators that are invasive and require a tube to be inserted into the patient's airway passage through the mouth. A CPAP machine is used to deliver single pressure while a BiPAP machine is used to ensure regulated inhaling and exhaling pressure of a patient.
The number of patients in the ICU at Gandhi which stood at 116 on July 11, has been steadily rising to reach 495 on Wednesday (July 15). There were 122 ICU patients on July 12, 227 on July 13 and 237 on July 14.
Meanwhile, in another worrisome development, rural parts of Telangana on Wednesday outstripped Hyderabad city - and the rest of the GHMC limits - in the number of Covid-19 cases with all the rest of the districts, including some urban pockets, recording 801 new Covid-19 victims, compared to 796 listed for the day under GHMC limits.
With 1,597 new cases on Wednesday, the total coronavirus-positive tested individuals in the state has risen to 39,342 so far. Meanwhile, the number of dead from the disease also continued to climb with 11 more persons, as per the daily Covid-19 bulletin, losing their lives to the disease, taking the death tally to 386.
Telangana currently has 12,958 active cases of Covid-19 while the number of people discharged increased to 25,999, with 1,159 individuals released from hospitals or government- run quarantine facilities or from home quarantine on Wednesday.
After GHMC, with 796 cases, Ranga Reddy district had the second highest number of cases at 212.
