Focus shifts to early hospitalisation of patients

The administration is redoubling its efforts to ensure early hospitalisation of COVID-19 patients to reverse the rising mortality graph that has seen 43 deaths being reported in a span of just four days. Since April 15, there have been 73 COVID-19 deaths in the Union Territory, of which 43 have occurred in the four days since April 22. While between April 15 and 23, the Union Territory had been averaging between one and five deaths every day, the highest single-day fatalities came on April 27 (13), April 26 (10), April 25 (11) and April 24 (9).

To illustrate how quickly the fatality count has risen, consider that the cumulative toll in the Union Territory, which stood at 699 on April 15, has swelled to 771 in less than two weeks.

“We have directed the PHCs to ramp up the field presence of ASHA workers and ANMs to detect and triage symptomatic patients to make a determination between hospitalisation and home isolation,” said T. Arun, Health Secretary.

Age, co-morbidity and late diagnosis and hospitalisation were still the primary drivers of a majority of COVID-19 deaths in the Union Territory, he said.

“Unlike in some other States, we fortunately have adequate admission capacity, including ventilators and oxygen beds. We are also putting on standby about 20 medium-sized private hospitals and nursing homes to cope with a situation of higher hospital admissions,” Mr. Arun said.

This would make available 837 beds, 845 oxygen beds, 34 ventilators and 67 ICU beds, in addition to the 200 oxygen beds that six private medical colleges have been asked to earmark for COVID-19 patients.

Case count

The administration has also ramped up focused testing around hotspots and micro-containment zones to increase detection rates.

On Tuesday, Puducherry accounted for all the 13 deaths reported in the Union Territory, even as fresh cases touched a new single-day high of 1,021.

With this, the cumulative toll in Puducherry rose to 620, followed by Karaikal (90), Yanam (48) and Mahe (13).

The new cases, which were confirmed from 6,502 tests, were reported from Puducherry (781), Karaikal (108) and Mahe (59). No new case was reported from Yanam.

The test positivity rate was 15.70%, the case fatality rate 1.40% and the recovery rate 84.38%.

With 690 patients recovering in the last 24 hours, the active cases aggregated 7,828. Of these, 1,522 were in hospitals and 6,306 in home isolation.

The cumulative caseload stood at 55,047, of which 46,448 patients have recovered so far.

The bed occupancy position was: JIPMER (254), IGMCRI (315) and COVID Care Centres (721).

Of an estimated 7.73 lakh tests conducted till date by the Health Department, over 6.95 lakh returned negative.

Meanwhile, 195 healthcare workers, 90 frontline staff and 784 members of the public took their first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine in the last 24 hours.

The aggregate of persons vaccinated in the Union Territory stood at 1,87,641, including 31,491 healthcare workers, 18,473 frontline personnel and 1,15,536 members of the public.

“The enthusiasm for vaccination among people above 45 years of age seems to have tapered off in recent days. We are looking to motivate more volunteers for vaccination as that is the only weapon against the pandemic,” a health official said.