Ventilators

India’s Covid-19 epidemic is mostly made up of cluster infections that are linked to patients who picked up the Sars-cov-2 virus while they were abroad. As on Friday, there have been 878 cases and 18 deaths — almost all of which have been recorded this month alone.

State government officials, however, contend that the Bureau of Immigration list that was sent to them often didn’t have complete and accurate information about the passengers.

In Bihar’s Muzaffarpur and Saran districts, for instance, the authorities have been able to locate only 385 of the 500 people mentioned in the Centre’s list.

Later on Friday, the Union health ministry said that two public sector units (PSUS) will begin arranging for 40,000 ventilators.

“Ventilator shortage has been an issue that the government has been closely monitoring, and several steps are being taken to ensure hospitals are well equipped and face no shortage of ventilators that are essential in managing critical Covid-19 patients,” said Lav Aggarwal, joint secretary, Union health ministry, adding that the acquisition is likely to take a couple of months.

A ventilator augments breathing function for a person when lungs are compromised, a condition common to all Covid-19 patients for whom the disease progresses into serious stages. In countries such as Italy and now in New York, a lack of ventilators is feared to be leading to many fatalities that may have otherwise been saved.

Improving resources such as medical devices while also ramping up close monitoring of the outbreak are among strategies known as mitigation and suppression — both of which are crucial for countries to “flatten the curve” of peak health care demand so that the number of patients does not exceed the available hospital and ICU beds.

According to estimates by Indian doctors and medical equipment industry professionals, India at present has 40,000 of the breathing machines — a number experts say will be woefully inadequate in case of a surge in Covid-19 infections.

According to trends seen in China, 5% of all Covid-19 patients need to be admitted to ICUS with acute breathing problems requiring ventilators for life support.

“The BEL (Bharat Electronics Limited) has been asked to manufacture about 30,000 ventilators and the other PSU approached for the job will be giving us 10,000 units,” said Aggarwal.

India this month lifted controls on producing medical ventilators. According to a government communication reviewed by Mint, the Centre plans to ask all interested manufacturing companies, including automakers, to start producing ventilators.

The country has also prohibited export of ventilators from the country. In addition to the 40,000 ordered on Friday, the government placed an order for 1,200 ventilators