Hyderabad: Officially Telangana has just 33 cases of the coronavirus even though Gandhi Hospital and Chest Hospital have asked designated private hospitals to not forward Covid-19 positive cases to them.
Treat cases in your hospital as our hands are full, is the message from health officials at government hospitals. This indicates that there are many more cases though they are not declared positive till the second test says so.
The Gandhi Hospital isolation ward, with 50 beds, is full. Those with severe cough and flu symptoms are kept in isolation and monitored. The Chest Hospital has over 20 patients. Doctors here worry as there are only 10 ventilators and so more admissions of patients with respiratory illness is risky.
The Fever Hospital's isolation ward has 25 beds; the spillover from Gandhi is to be shifted here.
On Monday morning, those who came in contact with travellers from Covid-19 countries were at Gandhi Hospital for testing.
Isolation wards in designated hospitals like Apollo, Care and Continental are ready and unlike previously, existing patients are not sent onwards to government hospital.
Three hundred auxiliary nurses are to check 628 home-quarantine patients. In case of symptoms, the patients are to report to the nearest hospital, Gandhi or private.
The swab procedure for testing Covid-19 releases aerosols making healthcare workers and the hospital set-up vulnerable.
The outpatient department, diagnostic endoscopy procedures and elective surgeries have been closed in private hospitals.
