Cases increasing sharply in Karnataka's rural areas: Narayana Health

Feedback from hospitals suggests that there is some stabilisation in COVID occupancies in big cities such as Bengaluru and Mumbai, but occupancies in private hospitals have surged in some of the smaller towns.

Viren Shetty, Executive Director and Group COO of Narayana Health said, “We are not getting this constant rush of people that are waiting outside the emergency departments. It is pretty stable and we have maybe a couple of beds free in the normal COVID wards. But our ICUs continue to be full and there is still a tremendous demand. In Bengaluru very much still our ICUs are full and we have a lot of trouble in meeting new cases.”

On the surge in COVID cases in Karnataka, he said, “What is worrisome is that in small towns, and we have a lot of hospitals in small towns across Karnataka, cases are ramping up by a lot. The problem with smaller towns is that the healthcare infrastructure doesn’t start at the good baseline as it is there are very few places and it was fine because the population is very less.”

“In hospital-like myself for example where we had seen only 10-20 cases a day now we are seeing 60-70 cases a day. So it is a little worry that it has spread so fast in rural India in a kind of velocity that we had not seen the last time around,” he explained further.