Kerala raises ‘surge capacity’ significantly, claims CM

Kerala has been able to raise its ‘surge capacity’ to deal with the evolving grave phase of the second wave of the pandemic which is best reflected in the ‘comfortable’ situation with respect to availability of medical oxygen across the state, according to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

He told newspersons on Wednesday night that the requirement of medical oxygen in the state assessed as per the prevailing situation is 74.25 metric tons (mt) while the state produces 219.22 mt. Only 931 ICU beds out of the 9,735 available in the public and private sector are occupied currently.

If one takes the ICU beds available in the public sector alone, only 50 per cent occupancy has been reported for both Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 patients. There are 3,776 ventilators available across the spectrum in the state of which Covid-19 occupancy is limited to 277, the Chief Minister said.

Adequate number of ICU beds

In the case of ventilators available in the private sector, he said only 18.2 per cent (of the total 2,253) has been occupied. The first line and second line Covid-19 treatment centres along with the district Covid-19 centres are estimated to have 1,99,256 beds across 2,249 such centres.

This apart, the private sector hospitals (136 of them having expressed their readiness to treat Covid-19 patients) have an aggregate 5,713 beds. In this manner, the state has a comprehensive and ready-to-go infrastructure to meet with any situation, which would be ramped up based on requirements.

If the overriding slogan during the first wave of the pandemic was ‘delay the peak,’ the State government has adopted a ‘Crush the Curve’ campaign in the second, the Chief Minister said. This involves a throwback to reflecting on ‘Back to Basics’ with stress on observance of basic Covid-19 protocols.

‘Crush the Curve’ campaign

Along with this, the government would seek to remind the public of its ‘Break the Chain’ campaign it had adopted during the wave of ‘screen-test-trace-treat’ to great effect, which had helped the state to delay the peak until almost all the states had done so and emerge with among the best-case fatality rates.

On the vaccination front, the state is among the only that has wasted potentially the least and has inoculated the maximum number of people. It has a capacity to serve more than 3.5 lakh persons on a daily basis. The state has already vaccinated 62,25,976 persons in all till Wednesday.