MAHARASHTRA
to help,” says Bhopal resident Jayesh Duggal, who lost a close friend to Covid. Testing too has been inadequate. Around 54,000 RT-PCR tests were conducted on April 18, but the high demand means test reports are delayed, which is impacting treatment.
The supply of critical drugs, such as favipiravir, remdesivir and tocilizumab, dried up in the second week of April. Black marketing was rampant with remdesivir selling at Rs 20,000 per injection. Worse still, a stock of over 850 remdesivir vials was reported stolen from the Gandhi Medical College in Bhopal. The ineptitude is evident even in oxygen supply. On April 18, at least six deaths were reported at the Covid ward of Shahdol Medical College. Doctors blamed it on disruption in oxygen supply but administrators denied this. The health department plans to add 70,000 Covid beds by April 30, including 9,300 ICU beds and 27,000 oxygen beds. Some 2,000 oxygen concentrator machines are being purchased to augment oxygen supply.
When Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray announced a lockdown on April 13, Maharashtra had started reporting an average 60,000 new Covid cases daily. This was almost four times the numbers in end-February. During the lockdown, only shops supplying essential commodities like medicines, vegetables and grocery are allowed to open between 7 am and 8 pm. From April 20, the timings for grocery shops have been restricted to 7 am to 11 am. Hotels, bars, restaurants, gymnasiums, spas and salons remain shut.
The state has close to 500 labs to conduct RT-PCR tests, but the growing load is delaying testing and results. The average time for getting a testing slot is two days while the report is available after three days. Health minister Rajesh Tope says labs have been asked to make reports available within 24 hours, but it looks like a tall order.
Maharashtra’s positivity rate was 16.19 per cent on April 18. The state is facing a shortage of remdesivir. There is a huge gap between demand and supply. Dr Sanjay Oak, head of the state’s Covid-19 taskforce, says remdevisir does not guarantee saving lives but it is useful in reducing the hospitalisation period. There are reports of remdevisir being sold in the grey market for as high as Rs 20,000-30,000 per vial. Aniruddha Patil, a resident of Thane, was shocked when a dealer asked him to pay Rs 22,000 for a vial. “I needed three vials for my ailing father. Fortunately, one of my friends provided me the spare vials he had bought for his mother. I had to pay him only Rs 3,600 for three vials,” says a relieved Patil.
The state government has started a helpline where patients can register to get remdesivir. It is mandatory for hospitals to register their demand with the district collector, who has been made the nodal officer for distribution of the injection. The government twice invited tenders for supply of 800,000 remdesivir vials but Rajendra Shingne, minister for food and drugs administration, says manufacturers were not interested in supplying the injections at the rate of Rs 1,656 per vial fixed by the government. “One manufacturer informed us they could provide the vials only after May 30. Another said they could provide only 500 vials every day,” said Shingne.
While the efforts to contain the pandemic are concentrated around the Mumbai-Pune belt, the Vidarbha region has been suffering the most. On April 19, Nagpur district recorded 113 deaths, the highest in the state that day. The Bombay High Court, on April 17, ordered the state government to supply 10,000 remdesivir vials to Nagpur.
Maharashtra is also facing shortage of medical oxygen. The state has been ensuring 1,200 metric tonnes of oxygen daily for Covid patients, but this is 500 metric tonnes short of the total requirement. An ‘Oxygen Express’, run by the railways between Visakhapatnam and Navi Mumbai, is expected to bridge the gap by end-April.
Vijay Wadettiwar, minister for relief and rehabilitation, says the government is thinking of imposing stricter restrictions from the first week of May if the number of new cases does not come down. Maharashtra has vaccinated around 130 million people till April 19. Tope says 800,000 people can be vaccinated every day if the vaccine supply is adequate.
There’s a daily shortfall of 500 metric tonnes of MEDICAL OXYGEN. The gap is expected to be bridged by end-April